


After the Dark

by fanfoolishness (LoonyLupin), LoonyLupin



Series: Meet You at the Bar: Seia Shepard x Garrus Vakarian [6]
Category: Mass Effect
Genre: Akuze, Angst, Destroy Ending, Explicit Sexual Content, F/F, F/M, Fix-It of Sorts, Geth, Paragon Commander Shepard, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Shakarian - Freeform, Sole Survivor (Mass Effect), Spacer (Mass Effect), Suicide Attempt, Tiptree
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-16
Updated: 2014-04-22
Packaged: 2018-01-12 16:04:32
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 30
Words: 62,884
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1191171
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LoonyLupin/pseuds/fanfoolishness, https://archiveofourown.org/users/LoonyLupin/pseuds/LoonyLupin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Shepard destroyed the Reapers, at terrible cost to the galaxy and to herself.  She may be alive, but was it worth it?  For now she has to live with herself and the things that she's done.  Garrus and her friends will give whatever aid they can, but she doesn't know if it will be enough.  </p><p>If anything will.</p><p>*****</p><p>Primarily FemShep/Garrus, with a dash of past Shepard/Liara, and discussion of Joker/EDI.  COMPLETE.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Loss

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is primarily Shakarian, with a dash of former Shepard/Liara (my Shep romanced her in ME1, and there is reference to that, but they are friends now). But mostly it's despair and sadness and trying to cope with what's been done and OW FUCK THE FEELS.

Fragments floated around her, shreds of memory.  Fire and ashes, the taste of blood, the weight of a pistol. Choice and its inevitability.  Fear, confusion, pain.

Her breathing was... wrong.  She knew the amount of effort it took her was a bad sign.  A negative prognostic indicator, Mordin would say.

She tore another ragged breath from the air.  Mordin was gone, though.  Perhaps everyone was.  The only thing she was certain of was her body, aching, throbbing, weak.

Shepard remembered swimming in the warm waters of a colony world as a child.  Her parents had been on shore leave and she had been splashing, bounding in the lake.  She'd gone too deep.  There wasn't even time to flail; the depth of the water was too final.  Her mouth opened.  She was limp, and there was nothing to do but draw the water deep into her lungs.

Her father wasn't here to pull her from the water.  There was only herself, and the smell of smoke, and the choke of her own blood in her bronchi.

But there were voices here, too.  Strangers.  Perhaps they were those who had fallen.  Ashley.  Mordin.  Thane.  Legion.

_Legion._

She clenched her fists, a weak sob escaping her lips.  What had she done?

The taste of copper in her mouth was so bitter.  Her hands slacked at her sides as she drew another breath.  She could hear a bubbling sound in it now.  She was not afraid.  She realized she had been expecting to die a long, long time.  

She deserved it now, anyway.

The voices grew louder, but she sank into stupor again.  Patchy fog.  Confusion.  Darkness.

Sometimes she heard a voice.  Other times, she thought she could feel sensations.  Cloth on her arm.  New flesh tearing with a sting.  Tubes and wires.  Sometimes she made a sound and things beeped in response.

Time passed, but she knew only the void.  It was better than remembering the alternative.

*****

Garrus' burns healed slowly.  Tali had nearly died, her suit was so damaged.  But she came through after days of fever.  He visited her frequently in the med-bay.  He didn't know what else to do.

Neither of them said Shepard's name.

Once when he came to visit her she was sitting up in bed crying, the sounds breathy through the amplifier of her suit.  "Garrus," she said, looking up at him.  Her voice was tortured.  "Why did we let her go?"

He couldn't answer.  It was the question that pressed upon him at night when he tried to sleep, the question that tore at him like a varren.  He sat down beside Tali and she leaned against him, weeping.  He let his head rest against hers.  They had been there beside Shepard, they had been there, and she had sent them back so they could live.

Turians did not produce tears in response to emotion.  But Garrus began to tremble until his hands were shaking, his shoulders shuddering.  He could not stop, even after Tali's weeping had quieted.  

"I'm so sorry," she said, and hesitantly reached up to pull him into a hug.  He closed his eyes, leaning against her, still shaking.

"Thanks," he said, barely managing to keep the quaver of his voice in check.  "I -- I'd better go."

He got to his feet, and she lay back down in her bed, curling up beneath the blankets.  "It will get better," she said softly.  "It has to."

"Yeah," he said, but he could not make himself believe it.

He left the med-bay, walking aimlessly.  The trembling was beginning to cease, though he did not care if anyone noticed it.  He saw Joker standing at the memorial wall, and his breath caught in his throat.  For a second he hated the sight of his friend, because it reminded him of what they shared.  Because Joker had lost the one he loved, too, and when Garrus saw the shadows under Joker's eyes and the stubble on his face, it was a visual reminder of how badly he was doing.  If Joker was doing that badly, then he, Garrus, was certainly not okay.  He hated that they were both in this position, that they both knew grief and emptiness more personally than they had ever hoped.  He remembered the way EDI had just... slumped, there in her pilot's chair.  Then Joker, yelling for help, for someone, anyone...

"Hey," said Garrus.

"Hey," said Joker.  He ran his fingers over EDI's nameplate on the wall, letting them rest on the letters.  "This --" He gestured to the wall.  "It fucking sucks, you know?"

"I know," said Garrus.  He stood beside Joker.  He still could not bear to put _her_ name up on that wall.  He looked at the space where it would go.  It looked so plain.  So stark.  It wasn't right.

Joker rubbed a hand over his reddening eyes.  "I'm sorry," he said.

"I don't blame you, Joker."  It was true.  In that moment, when they saw the red light pulsing toward them, to go into it would have been suicide.  The fact that Joker had wanted to go back for her, had tried, was all that Garrus had needed to see.  Years of military training told him what folly it would be to go back for the commander at the risk of the entire crew.  He knew that.

"Well, I blame me."  Joker laughed, the sound something like a bark.  "For both of them! How does that make any sense?  Because if I'd gone back for Shepard, we might have had her.  And if I'd flown us out immediately, then I might still have _her_."  He traced the nameplate once more.  "Instead I lost both of them.  Hell, I've lost Shepard twice."  He cast a dark look at Garrus.  "The crew will have the ship up by tomorrow.  I thought maybe we could try to go to the Citadel.  At least find her, and give her the old hero's sendoff.  She deserves that much at least."

"That would..."  Garrus swallowed, nodded.  "I would like that. But what about EDI?"

"I thought I would take her to Tiptree," Joker mumbled.  "She never got to see it, but... we talked about visiting, after the war."

"You know I'll be there."

"Thanks, man."

Garrus left him by the memorial wall and headed into the main battery.  So much of his time had been spent in this room, most of it alone.  It was a chilly place, not a turian's favorite climate.  But when Shepard had come to talk to him -- his Shepard -- the room had seemed to come alive with a warmth that reached his core.  Now it was colder than ever.

He settled himself against the wall in the far corner, sitting with his legs stretched out before him, head against the smooth surface of the bulkhead.  He closed his eyes.  For a moment, he allowed himself to hope she might still be alive.  But it was just a moment.  It had been days with no word, and whatever had happened on the Citadel had been big.  How could she have survived?  

No, better not to hope, not to think, not to remember.  Better to just sit, legs against metal, head bowing forward, hands open and pleading before him like a prayer.  But prayers never did anything.


	2. Memory

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Two friends try to help each other cope with their losses, only to realize their loss is not as profound as they'd feared.

The journey was longer than it should have been. FTL transport was achingly slow. If EDI had still been there, she could have told them if the relays were safe to be used or not. Instead, they flew on past the half-darkened structures, not daring to trust them.

Garrus passed the time by calibrating, calibrating. Numbers and figures, diagrams, schematics. They did not bring him comfort but they helped maintain an emptiness in his head that was better than thoughts. He stayed standing at the desk for hours, repeating the same actions again and again.

The door slid open, but he ignored the sound. He heard someone clearing their throat. "Garrus," said Liara.

"Hey, Liara," he said, turning around. She stood there, rubbing the back of her neck, looking away from him.

"How are you doing?"

Garrus shrugged. "Still breathing. Still calibrating. It's all that I can think of to do."

Liara smiled a little, though it was a sad smile that did not reach her eyes. "I asked how you were doing, not what you were doing."

Garrus chuckled, though the action made him wince. Sometimes he forgot he was still injured. "And I deliberately tried to avoid thinking about that."

"I know the feeling." Garrus thought back to when the Normandy SR-1 had been destroyed. Back then, Shepard had been his commander who he'd respected, his friend, but not his lover. Back then, it had been Liara leaning on her shoulder at quiet moments.

"How did you --" Garrus paused, tried to collect his thoughts. "When we lost her before, how --"

"How did I go on?" Liara finished. She looked helplessly at him. "I don't know. I just kept moving, all the time. When the Shadow Broker took her, I found something new to focus on. Revenge. And it cost me." She shook her head. "I hope it hasn't been awkward, me being here, the two of you together. I wanted nothing but happiness for both of you." Her voice trailed off.

Garrus shook his head. "No. Even when we got together, she still missed your friendship. I know she was happy to have you back on the Normandy, Liara. I was too. You've been a good friend."

Liara nodded, crossing her arms. "Thank you, Garrus. I wanted you to know that we'll be at the Citadel in a few hours. Communication has been spotty but Joker has not heard of any problems with the plan. Are you going to be all right?" She glanced over at the workbench, where the COMMANDER SHEPARD nameplate lay.

Garrus avoided looking at the nameplate, and instead examined his hands, flexing his fingers. "No. But I need to find her."

"I know." Liara closed the distance between them. "I can give you something, if you would like. It is one of my favorite memories, but perhaps the grief is still too near for you to see it."

Garrus felt apprehensive. He knew about the asari's abilities to bring memories to life, but had never been offered the chance. Still, though, if it gave him a moment see her, his Shepard, as if she was warm and real... "If you want," he said, his voice rough with emotion he struggled to suppress.

Liara nodded, tears shining in her eyes. "I thought it might help. It helped me, before." She reached up with one hand and touched him, questioningly, along his unscarred cheek, just above the mandible. Her hand was soft, but it wasn't that human touch that had become so familiar. "Close your eyes."

He obeyed. Suddenly his perception of the world around him faded, shrunk down to nothing. There was no scent of machinery, no low rumble in the distance, no tang of recycled air. There was darkness for a moment, and then --

It was the Citadel, cherry blossoms fluttering in the breeze, the soft sounds of water moving below. Shepard stood alone by a railing, overlooking the water, her face turned away. Her hair, loose and free, waved gently in the wind. She was wearing a dress he had never seen before. She glanced over her shoulder, and with a bitter pang he saw the way she had looked before Cerberus, with that scar lining her brow.

Then she smiled, one of those rare smiles that lit her whole face, the smile that always felt so special when she let him see it. He reached out to touch her, forgetting for a moment that this wasn't real.

The moment ended jerkily, and Garrus was brought back to himself. Liara looked up at him, her face streaked with tears. "I'm sorry," she said. "It was too difficult to maintain the connection." She tried to hold back a sob. "I miss her, Garrus."

"Me too," he rasped, breathing heavily, trying not to lose his composure.

"You should rest before we get there," Liara said, letting out a long sigh. "It will be difficult, for all of us." She patted him on the shoulder, the motion clumsy but well-meaning, and gave him a shivery smile. He tried to return it but his mandibles didn't seem to be working correctly. The muscles of his face felt all wrong.

"See you then," he said, and she nodded, leaving him alone once more.

He did not rest. He did not see the point.

*****

"Normandy SR-2, reporting in to Alliance Command," Joker said sharply into the console. Behind him Liara, Tali, and Kaidan stood, eager to hear of news. Garrus sat in EDI's old chair, head bowed, waiting for word of the inevitable. "Permission to approach the Citadel."

"The Citadel is heavily damaged and under repair," the woman on the other end answered. "What is the nature of your request to approach?"

"Permission to search the wreckage for Commander Shepard's... for the Commander," Joker finished, unable to say the word 'remains.'

"Let me see here. Sir, it appears that Commander Shepard has already been recovered."

Joker nodded, biting his lip. "Thank you." Garrus said a silent thanks to the spirits of the Citadel. He did not know if he could have borne it, to search for her amongst twisted wreckage, to find her body beginning to fall apart. "We wanted to give her a memorial here on the Normandy, ma'am. This was her ship, her crew. We need to say goodbye the right way." The bitterness in his voice was palpable.

"Sir..." The woman paused, apparently searching for information. "I thought you knew. Commander Shepard is alive."


	3. Reunion

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They could come back from this, Garrus thought. They had to.

Dimly Garrus registered the scene around him.  People here still looked as if the war was on; their faces were pinched, their uniforms battle-worn.  But there was an energy about the Alliance ship that was hopeful.  He heard the voices around him, volleying back information.  The geth had fallen where they stood.  All of them.  The news stunned him; he had thought it was only EDI.  They had had such little communication with the rest of the great fleet since they fled the blast.

The geth, gone.  Whatever the Crucible did, it must have ended all synthetic life.  He remembered Legion, and its sacrifice, but he forced the thought away.  Thoughts about the new and altered universe they lived in, they could wait.  He had his commander to see.

Hackett himself had briefed them cautiously on what to expect.  "She was injured badly," said the gruff human.  "She was on life support the first few days.  We thought without our infrastructure that we were going to lose her.  But she came back."  The man paused.  "She hasn't wanted to speak to any of us about what happened on the Citadel.  We knew we lost Anderson, but she won't say anything else.  Sometimes when she's been sedated we've gathered a few words here and there --"

"Sedated?  Why?" asked Garrus sharply.

"To speed the healing process," said Hackett.  "The doctors said that it's clear there's been a great trauma there.  Letting her body focus on recovery is more important right now."  He looked at Garrus in particular.  "We still had her personnel file on record.  I understand she had you named as next of kin.  Garrus, isn't it?"

"Garrus Vakarian, sir."  He remembered the day he'd walked in on her in her cabin, updating something on her omni-tool.  Her cheeks had gone pink when he'd asked what she was doing, before she admitted she was adding his name to her official record.   _If something happens, I want you to have my tags_ , she'd said, and he'd kissed her then as if he could keep that day from coming.

"She may want to speak with you first.  Her doctors have said she's up for brief vists now.  I expect she'll be happy to see you."

Garrus had nodded, feeling more than seeing the disappointment from the rest of the crew around him.  He knew they'd want to see her, too, and yet he felt grateful that he was getting to see her first.  The amount of emotions that had hit him when they heard she was alive -- he was glad he had been sitting down.  He tried to shove aside the raw memories of the grieving he'd been doing. 

Now he was walking with Hackett through a makeshift Alliance medical ward on one of their less damaged frigates.  Rooms were hastily created with haphazard dividers, mere sheets strung up between beds to give an illusion of privacy.  Hackett stopped at one of the little rooms and pointed. 

"She's in there.  Let us know if she feels ready to tell us what happened."

Garrus nodded.  He stood before the sheet, which was patched with what appeared to be part of somebody's uniform.  It moved slightly in a breeze from an air vent.  He felt his heart beating rapidly as he tried to prepare himself for how she might look.  Shepard.  Before he could think he pulled aside the sheet and slipped into the small room.  A little huff of breath escaped from between his mouth plates before he could suppress it, like the wind had been knocked from him.

Shepard lay on her back in the hospital bed, covers up over her chest, a thin oversized gown hanging off of one shoulder.  She was sleeping. He groaned inwardly to see the bandages sealed over the skin of her arms, the sutures in her face and neck, the violet bruises marring her cheeks and beneath her eyes.  Tubing snaked from one arm to a stand, and monitoring devices seemed to surround her.  He felt gutted to see her like this.

He fumbled, clawed compulsively at the stool by her bed, and sat heavily upon it, his face falling into his hands.  His talons dug into his fringe as he closed his eyes, unable to cope with the way she lay before him.  The grief was fresh and real again; the grief of losing her, and a new, biting kind of pain of seeing her like this instead.  All this time, they had been two soldiers fighting side by side.  But he hadn't been there when this happened to her, and the guilt shattered him.  He was sick with it.

A rough sound startled him.  He let his hands fall, his breath quickening.  Her eyes were closed, but he could see them moving rapidly beneath her eyelids.  Human skin.  So thin.  So fragile.  All the more reason for him to have taken this hit instead of her.

Her mouth moved, and a sound, raw and scratchy, left it.  "Didn't want to..."  Her voice trailed off.

"Shepard," he whispered.

Her eyes opened, the motion slow and painful against the swelling.  She blinked a few times, trying to focus on him.

"It's me.  It's Garrus.  I'm here."  He reached out one hand and gently touched her shoulder, one of the few places he could see that looked undamaged.  The feel of her skin beneath his fingers again --  The guilt fled for a moment, replaced with a dizzying sense of gratitude.  She was alive.  She was _here_.  No matter what had happened to her, they could come back from this.

"Garrus?" she said, her voice thick, her face barely changing expression.  Hackett had warned him she was still on heavy medications.  He didn't mind.  He had never thought he would hear her say his name again.  It sounded beautiful no matter the fog it came through.  "You're... here?"

Her hand twitched, and she tried to reach to him, but groaned before she'd made it more than a few centimeters.  He quickly cradled her five fingers between six, one thumb delicately tracing the back of her hand. 

"Shepard," he croaked, barely able to speak himself.  The trembling he'd broken down with in front of Tali was creeping back, but he refused to let it undo him.  He had to be strong for her.  Had to let her know things were going to be all right. He attempted a laugh.  "I'm mad at you, you know."

"Why... why's that?" she asked, opening her eyes a little wider through the swelling.  He forced a smile.

"You went off and killed all the Reapers without me," he said, his voice catching.  He exhaled heavily, bowing closer to her.  "I at _least_ wanted to take down Harbinger personally."

"Garrus," she said.  He was close enough that he could feel her breath puff against his cheek.  She hesitated.  "That joke... was terrible..." 

He closed his eyes tightly, that fierce sense of gratitude swelling within him.  They _would_ come back from this.  He pulled back and kissed her hand, savoring the familiar feel of it between his, and looked into her eyes. They were tired. They were... haunted.  But they were his Shepard's, and she was here with him.

"Sorry," he said, giving her a half-smile and a tilt of his head.  "Haven't felt much like joking lately.  But I'm here now, and I'm going to take care of you, Shepard."

Her fingers twitched, squeezing back against his hands.  "Love you," she whispered.  She was tired, he could see, and he knew he had to let her rest.  But she was here.  She was here.

"Love you, too," he said, and he felt cold remembering the last time he had told her that, with destruction everywhere, his skin burning inside his armor, and he wanting nothing more than to go with her.  To never leave her like that again.  


 This time was different.  He would not let her face the world alone.  No matter what.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We'll see how long it takes for Shepard and Garrus to admit just how extremely not-fine they are to each other. Until then, they'll keep trying to be giant dorks to each other until the angst kicks in completely. *wibble*


	4. Home Again

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Homecoming is always bittersweet.

Shepard jerked awake.

Her skin was clammy with a cold sweat, and her body ached.  It took a moment before the thrum of engines around her became familiar.  She was here in the Normandy med-bay.  Dr. Chakwas was considering releasing her to light duty in a few days.  She’d been transferred over from the Willamette a few hours ago, after she’d given her report to Hackett.

Her chest felt tight, compressed.  She remembered school back on one of her parents’ ships, reading books from Earth.  There had been a man in a play, accused of something terrible, weighted down with a great stone until he was slowly crushed to death.  She chuckled bitterly at the memory. How ironic.

The med-bay was dimmed for sleeping hours, only thin strips of running lights present on the floor and the walls to light the way back to the door.  The windows were blacked to give her privacy.  She pulled the blankets up around her neck and shoulders as she rose to a sitting position, grimacing.

Just because she was no longer on life support didn’t mean she had healed.  The skin of her face and on the burned parts of her arms was almost normal again — as much as it was going to be — but the lacerated spleen and the deep muscle damage would take weeks to repair.

For a moment she sat there in silence, the dark laying on her like a cloak.  This was better than sleeping.  At least this way she could tear her mind away from intrusive thoughts with some success.  In sleep, she was completely helpless.

Even while she tried to tell herself this, though, memories crowded in upon her.  They were small ones, at first.  The ring EDI had given her, rare, unique, thoughtful.  Legion’s attempt at an excuse — “There was a hole.”  Joker and EDI, dancing at the party.  It seemed millennia ago.  She bowed her head, then tried to steer her mind back to earlier in the day.

Hackett had listened gravely during her interview, as she had laid out the choices of the Crucible in a brittle, measured way.  He’d had only praise for her.  ”We set out to destroy them.  We did it.   _You_  did it, when no one else could.  Humanity will remember you for it, Shepard.  Hell, the whole galaxy will.”   She didn’t answer with what she was thinking.   _That’s what I’m afraid of._

He had let them transfer her over after bringing Dr. Chakwas on board to be rounded by her doctors.  ”Oh, my,” Dr. Chakwas had said softly upon seeing her.  Shepard still hadn’t seen a mirror, but she knew there would be some scars that were permanent.  She didn’t care.  Numbly she reached out, shook the other woman’s hand, forced a smile.  She was happy to see her.  Happy to be heading back to the Normandy.  Wasn’t she?

Her time on the Alliance ship had begun to feel like a vacation from life, the galaxy, everything.  As she stepped over the threshold from the shuttle into the Normandy, things came crashing back to reality.  Especially when she looked at her crew and saw their excitement.  Tali, her suit patched all over, hands clasped in front of her.  Liara, her sweet face in a wide, genuine smile.  James and Steve were high-fiving; Samantha laughed.  Javik gave her a solemn nod.  Kaidan’s face creased in a rare grin.  And here, just here, was Garrus, trying his hardest to hold back his emotions.  It would have been perfect.

Except she saw the way Joker hung back a little from the group, the way his smile faltered.  And she saw the empty space beside him where EDI would have been.

They all cheered for her, and she tried to smile back at them, but she looked away from the shadows on Joker’s face.  He still didn’t know what she’d done… that she’d chosen this.

"Give her some room, everyone," said Dr. Chakwas, kindly but firmly, shaking Shepard from her thoughts.  "Our Commander’s had a long day and needs some rest.  You’ll have a chance to visit later, but right now we’ll be taking her straight to the med-bay.  You can all start queuing up for a chat tomorrow."

Shepard put out a hand against the door of the shuttle, still unsteady on her feet.  ”Glad to see all of you,” she managed to say before stumbling forward.  Garrus was there before she could fall, keeping her on her feet.  He slipped an arm around her.

"Come on, you’ve got to rest," he said in a low voice only she could hear. He had half-carried her, half-walked with her, down to the med-bay, Dr. Chakwas leading the way.  She leaned against Garrus heavily with each step. For a moment she shuddered, as a vision of the way she’d dragged him back to the Normandy flooded her mind. _“No matter what happens here, you know I love you. I always will.”_

"I thought I’d never see you again," she whispered as the med-bay doors slid open and Dr. Chakwas hurried to the nearest bed, turning down the covers.  Shepard looked up at Garrus and touched his face, the familiar scars on his leathery cheek, the firm ridge of his mandible.

He smiled at her, then kissed her on the forehead.  She shivered to feel him so close again.  ”I could say the same to you.”

"Garrus?" Dr. Chakwas called.  "I know you’re happy to see our commander, but she does need her rest."

Garrus pulled away regretfully. “I’ll be here as often as she lets me, Shepard.”

"I know you will, Garrus," Shepard said, resignedly taking a few steps with him to the bed. "I heard that you were a real pain in the ass for the Willamette doctors."  She chuckled, and sat down heavily on the edge of the bed.

"Hey, someone had to look out for you over there," said Garrus defensively.  "But don’t worry.  You’re in good hands now."  He leaned down and kissed her cheek.  "I’ll see you soon."

But soon wasn’t now, Shepard realized, sitting there in the dark.  For now Garrus was somewhere else, not here at her side.  Dr. Chakwas had been understanding, but she had recommended Shepard sleep alone here in the med-bay until she was a little more healed.  With Garrus there, it was like she was able to focus for a moment on something besides the truth clawing at the back of her mind.  Without him, it howled to be noticed.

She sat with her arms wrapped around her legs, her chin resting in the gap between her knees.  The hum of engines and the whirrs of monitors were no distraction.

"Coward," she whispered, and she buried her face in the crook of her elbow, willing herself not to think, not to know.

"Coward," she said again into the dark, and the fact that no one answered left her hollow with relief.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \- can't even believe I made a "The Crucible" pun sorry (not sorry)  
> \- the Willamette is named for one of my favorite rivers, the river that cuts through the heart of Portland, OR, my hometown  
> \- angst. again. SHEPARD IS SO NOT OKAY. :(


	5. Libations

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Garrus drinks to celebrate Shepard's return, but he can't hide the growing worry that he feels for her.

Garrus sat in the lounge, staring deep into a short glass.  His head felt disconnected from the rest of him, as if it was floating above him on a string.  It had been rather a lot of brandy he had ingested in a short time.

He turned blearily to Tali.  ”It’s pretty good, don’t you think?”

"I’ll always be a little partial to quarian wine," said Tali, perched on her bar stool with a wineglass in hand.  "Even grown on the liveships it’s pretty tasty.  But turian brandy is all right too."  She raised her glass to him.  "To friendship, Garrus."

"Hear, hear," he said thickly, raising the glass and clinking it against hers.  He glanced over his shoulder and saw Liara curled up in a corner on the couch, her head leaning on Samantha’s shoulder as they dozed.  Kaidan was yawning next to them both.  They’d all come in for a celebratory toast to Shepard’s return.  James and Steve had broken off with Javik to do tequila shots in engineering with Adams and Donnelly, and Joker had begged off early, saying he was tired.  Dr. Chakwas had shared a bit of Serrice ice brandy before retiring early as well.  It had felt good, all of them in here together.  But Garrus was starting to feel as if he’d rather be alone.

"You look preoccupied," Tali said, interrupting his reverie.  "I thought you’d be over the moon with Shepard back."  She laughed, the sound something like a hiccup.  "Shepard taught me that expression.  I always liked it."

"I’m happy, Tali.  Don’t I look happy?"  He squinted down into his glass.  "All right, you got me.  I can’t possibly be happy with this glass being empty again."

”Kaidan!” Tali called.  ”My friend here needs another refill.”

Kaidan got to his feet, moving carefully to avoid bumping Samantha or Liara.   He grabbed his own beer as he came to join them at the bar.  ”How did I get roped into being the official bartender?” he asked.  

"We didn’t tell you?  We had a vote," said Tali.  "It was unanimous, so I’m afraid you’re stuck with it.  Now, we require your services."

"All right, all right."  He fixed them all another round.  "Looks like Liara and Samantha are down for the count.  Their loss."

"Another cheer!" said Tali delightedly.  "To those of us who can hold our liquor!"

Kaidan laughed and raised his glass.  Garrus followed suit, a little sluggishly.  He thought briefly about stopping, about going to bed and sleeping it off, about the nagging sense that things were very, very wrong.

"Garrus, what’s bothering you?" asked Kaidan.  "Spit it out."

"You see, I told you you looked preoccupied," said Tali.

"Nothing.  It’s nothing," Garrus protested.  He took another gulp of alcohol to give himself time to think, but in this fogged state it was getting difficult to hold back.  "It’s just…"

Kaidan frowned, setting his glass down and looking concerned.  ”What is it?”

"She’s not all right," said Garrus.  His head pounded.  

"I can’t say I’m surprised.  She’s been through a lot.  I  _would_  be surprised if she was back to normal already,” said Kaidan.  ”I mean… none of us knew going into it what the Crucible did for sure.  Being the one who had to get it going… that’s a lot of responsibility.  I’m sure she was shocked, to find about the geth.”  He hesitated.  ”And EDI.  That was hard, for all of us.  I had never thought about AIs the way EDI taught me to think about them.  She was a good person, no matter how she was made.”

"For so long, my people hated and feared what we had created," mused Tali.  "After Legion, and Rannoch… I finally hoped we could understand them.  And they could understand us.  But the same thing that brought us peace destroyed them."  She let out a long sigh.  "I’ve been in touch with the other admirals.  Some of them are glad the geth are gone.  The old prejudices die hard.  But most of the other quarians find it to be a great loss, now that we had seen what they could do.  We were just beginning to know them, and work with them, and now they’re gone.  I know Shepard trusted Legion, and to realize that what it — he? — did for the geth and the quarians was meaningless….  It will take some time, Garrus.  Don’t worry.  Our Shepard will be back."

Garrus opened his mouth to speak, but nothing came out.  He knew these things they were saying.  They were right.  But something didn’t add up.  It was in the way that Shepard’s eyes were still cast down despite the healing bruises.  He saw it in her stammering words, as if she was choosing what to say and what to hide.  He knew she had made her report to Hackett.  She still hadn’t spoken about it with him.

"You’re right," he said instead.  "She’s kicked too much ass to stay down for long."  He drained his glass more rapidly than was wise, but he didn’t care.  "Come on.  Hit me again."

It was another hour before Kaidan and Tali woke Liara and Samantha up, and the four of them stumbled off to bed, waving goodnight.  Garrus found that the idea of making it from this stool to his bed was beyond him, so instead he stretched out on one of the couches, his feet dangling off the end, head haphazardly supported by a cushion.

She wasn’t all right.  He knew it.  The others might not have noticed it yet, but he could tell.  There was something massive that she was holding in, and until she let him know, he would continue to worry.

For now, though, he fought back nausea and a sickening case of the spins.  He hadn’t drunk this much even at the party on the Citadel, and now he was hoping not to vomit.  Vomiting was especially unpleasant for turians, and he had no desire to do it now.

His mind drifted as he closed his eyes, trying to ride out his seesawing vestibular system.  Memories filtered into his consciousness, memories that seemed eons away.  Was it only a week or two ago that he told Shepard to meet him at the bar if they didn’t make it?  Was it so long ago that he held her, her body soft and smooth in that dress, as they danced?  And that night, when she’d nearly ripped his tunic pulling it off in her haste, was that so long ago as well?  He smiled against the dizziness, remembering the feel of her skin against his.  They might be different, but they had learned how to make the differences work.  And damn if they didn’t work well.

But behind the sweetness of those thoughts was that brooding, knowing fear that he was trying to ignore.  Garrus  _knew_  Shepard now.  He remembered those days when they’d first joined with Cerberus, and Shepard was still getting used to being alive again.  He hadn’t known her nearly as well then, but he had still sensed the turmoil in her, the struggle.  Now he could see it plainly, magnified a thousandfold.  

The physical wounds would heal, just as his were healing.  He wasn’t sure if the damage no one could see would ever heal.  The idea scared him.  It was nothing that could be solved with a bullet.

He coughed, the nausea throbbing in the plated area above his eyes.  Fuck.  It was going to be a long night.


	6. Morning Tea

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Liara and Tali and a heart-to-heart in the morning stillness.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Because I love my lady alien friends/ex-girlfriends just as much as I love a sexy vigilante turian.

Liara liked these moments, early in the morning.  The Alliance clock on the wall read 0517, though of course, it was all relative here in space.  She supposed it was a little more accurate lately, given that the Normandy was idling above Earth with the majority of the Alliance fleet.  

Regardless of the true time, the crew was still abed, and Liara had the kitchen to herself.

She had fallen asleep early last night, after they had toasted Shepard’s return.  Liara had found herself swept up in the camaraderie with the others, raising a glass of Dr. Chakwas’ brandy, cheering like the rest.  But she had not been able to stay awake long, a mixture of the potent brandy and the recent nights of broken sleep. 

Just a few days ago she had been convinced of Shepard’s death.  Again.  The idea made her stomach twist.  The day the Normandy SR-1 was destroyed, a piece of her had shattered.  And she hadn’t even had a chance to say goodbye.  Everything had happened so quickly.  One moment, Shepard was there, telling her to get to safety.  The next, she was a cooling body in N7 armor in the deeps of space.  

Liara tried to push the thought away.  She was an asari, was she not?  This was the fate of all asari who loved those less long-lived than themselves.  Shouldn’t she have been able to cope, before?  When the grief for Shepard had been too much she had wished, dearly, that Benezia was still alive.  She would have known how to pull Liara out of the depths; she would have had some wisdom on becoming in tune with the inevitable passage of time and the temporary nature of all things. 

Foolishly, when she realized that Shepard had gone into the Crucible and had not returned, she had had a momentary thought of  _At least it will be easier this time_.  Then she had felt ashamed of herself.  She wasn’t jealous of Garrus and the bond he had with Shepard, nor angry atShepard for finding companionship where she could.  After all, Liara had been the one so intent on eliminating the Shadow Broker that she had turned down the chance to stand by Shepard’s side.  She smiled sadly at the thought.  Surely, as the years stretched on, these things would be less painful to her.  She hoped that was the way it worked. 

She had been wrong, of course, about it being easier to grieve Shepard a second time around, as a friend and not a lover.  The second time merely brought layers of meaning to the first, overlays of regret and friendship, trust and love, respect and an aching nostalgia.  She had shut herself in her room the first day and turned all of her monitors off.  Glyph tried to chat with her and she threw a singularity at him, and he disappeared for the next two days before coming back online.  It wasn’t easier.  It was just hard in a different way. 

Liara sighed, reaching for her favorite mug.  It was a delicate but strong cup she had brought from her home on Thessia.  She had had it for thirty or forty years now, a gift from Benezia.  Emblazoned on the side was a mass relay worked in whorls of silver and midnight blue, and engraved on the handle was a short note from her mother.   _To my little wing.  Time for tea._   She hunted in the cupboard and pulled out a teabag of a vanilla black tea.  Humans had excellent taste in beverages sometimes. 

She set the water boiling, humming the song she had taught Shepard.  It got stuck in her head easily these days, it seemed.  

She heard footsteps behind her, and glanced to her side.  Tali was shuffling into the kitchen, sluggishness apparent in the heavy way her footsteps fell and her bowed shoulders.  ”Good morning, Tali.  I didn’t expect to see you up so early.” 

"I couldn’t sleep," Tali complained.  "Stupid turian brandy.  Remind me to punish Garrus the next time I see him." 

"I’ll make a note," said Liara, smiling.  "You’re welcome to share some of my water for tea.  I think we still have a few bags of the dextro oolong, if you would like.  The conventional kind has worked well when I have needed it after an overly adventurous evening." 

"Thanks, Liara," she said.  "You turned in early last night." 

Liara shrugged, reaching for the dextro tea and tossing the box to Tali, who caught it clumsily.  ”I haven’t been sleeping well.  Apparently I should have asked Dr. Chakwas for help in that department earlier.”

Tali nodded, pulling down a mug for herself.  ”I know the feeling.  Do you get the idea that everyone on board is… well, barely holding it together?”

Liara managed a short laugh.  ”Yes, actually.  These past few months we’ve literally been fighting for our very galaxy.  Everything we’ve ever known.  And yet — the big picture can be too big, sometimes.  It is hard to remember what you’re fighting for when all you see out there is the void.”  She glanced past Tali, gazing for a moment at the memorial wall.  ”And then something happens and you remember just how much there is to lose.”  She shook her head.  ”I still haven’t come to terms with Thessia.  Even though there’s hope now, it’s still… awful.”

"I can only imagine," said Tali.  “We were all worried about you.”

“So I heard,” said Liara wryly.  “Shepard let it slip that you and Garrus were plotting about me and my well-being.”

“That wasn’t plotting, that was  _caring_!” Tali protested.  “What are old friends for?”   

“For just that,” said Liara.  “I was glad.  It was strange adjusting to being on the Normandy again.  And part of me felt guilty that I hadn’t stayed by Shepard the way you and Garrus did.  It was nice to see you still thought of me as part of the crew.” 

“Liara, now you’re being ridiculous,” said Tali.  She nudged Liara with an elbow.  “Once a Normandy crew member, always a Normandy crew member.  Period.  But… you were saying about Thessia?”

“It’s difficult to describe.  In my head sometimes it’s still beautiful, untouched.  We were always so careful of our world.  We never had the problems of Tuchanka or Rahkana.  And then in a few days it crumbled.  I remember going to the parks with my mother, seeing the trees blossoming in the breeze.  Now I see those trees aflame.”

"We just reclaimed Rannoch, and I can’t even comprehend losing it again.  Is it getting better, though?  Now that you know you can rebuild?  That must help a little."  She pulled out a packet of tea and flicked open the sterilization window on the wrist of her suit, directing a narrow beam of ultraviolet light over the leaves in the mug.   

"A little," Liara said.  "It surprised me, how much it hurt.  I hadn’t been back to Thessia for many years.  But it was still my homeworld.  That day was… devastating."

The water for the tea reached boiling point.  Liara poured it into both of their mugs, then carried her hot tea over to the table, gesturing with a nod of her head for Tali to follow.  Tali settled herself down across the table from Liara a moment later, tea cradled in her hands.

“What is it like?” Tali asked quietly, looking down into her mug. 

“What is what like?” 

“Being able to remember living on your homeworld.  I’ve always wondered.”  She shifted in her seat.  “Having your earliest memories tied to a specific place…  I built it up in my head so often over the years.  What would it be like to stand on the shore as a little girl, looking up to my parents, trusting them to keep me safe?  Playing with friends and climbing rocks, or trees, instead of having to settle for the liveships?  It must be nice.  I’m glad that little quarians can grow up with that now, but I wish I’d been able to have that for myself.” 

Liara smiled at the other woman, gesturing with one hand.  “It’s difficult, because sometimes it can become another thing to take for granted.  You start to think, well, the temple will always be there.  Even when you leave for decades and things look just a little different, a part of you expects it will always be the same.  I do treasure it now though.  If nothing else this war has taught me that assumptions are fatal, and even the surest thing in your life can be gone in an instant.”

Tali’s thick fingers curled around her mug.  “That is certainly true,” she agreed.  She paused for a moment.  ”There’s something I feel guilty about.” 

“What?” asked Liara.  

“Shepard.  And Garrus.” 

“Because Shepard sent you and Garrus back to the ship, and you couldn’t go with her?”

“Yes,” said Tali.  “There is that…  Part of me is so ashamed for not being able to follow her then.  I wanted to do anything to help her.”  She bowed her head.  “And it’s difficult, seeing how long it’s taking her to recover.  Keelah, I’m amazed that that woman keeps going.”

“She’s a hero,” murmured Liara.  “But that isn’t the only thing you feel guilty about, it seems.”

“I lied to Garrus,” said Tali.  “Last night, in the lounge.”

Liara glanced in the direction of the main battery, but Garrus was nowhere in sight.

“What did you say?” 

“He was worried about Shepard.  I mean we all are, aren’t we?  We’ve all been grieving for her, and just because she’s back doesn’t mean we can turn off those feelings like a switch.  Everything is all mixed up, still.  I think it’s worst of all for him.  He thinks… I think he’s afraid that Shepard won’t come back from what happened up there.”  She laughed a little, but the sound was sad.  “So I lied to him.  I told him she would.” 

“You don’t believe it.”

“Something more happened up there than what they’re telling us, I think.  I don’t know what, but it was bad.  I hope I can talk to Shepard today.  I’m worried about her, too.” 

“That makes three of us,” Liara murmured.  Her tea had cooled enough to sip, and she savored the warmth of it, the sweetness.  “It’s strange, isn’t it?  The stillness after the war.  I don’t know what to do with it, and I’m not even a soldier.  I don’t think Shepard’s ever been comfortable being still.  I hope she can learn how.  I think she needs it.” 

Tali nodded.  They slipped into silence, focusing on their tea.  Soon enough the crew would be stirring, activity bustling, bodies moving.  For now they took a measure of strength from the quiet that surrounded them. 

Liara closed her eyes.  She hoped that Shepard could find a path to peace.  She hoped it, and yet she feared that it was not to be.


	7. The Stuff of Breakfast

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shepard gets breakfast in bed, but it's not enough to keep nightmares at bay.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is sort of shaping up to be a Mass Effect version of plot, what plot? except less sex and more conversations. Er, not to say there won’t be sex at some point. But there’ll be a lot of talking before that point.
> 
> This is a rather long chapter! Expect some eggs, some nightmares, and oh yeah. Angst. If you forgot.

Shepard groaned, rolling over in bed, the covers rumpling around her.  Even with the pain medications they had her on, most movements made her wince.  The Alliance doctors had said her internal injuries should have been fatal, but a combination of the Cerberus implants and sheer luck had limited hemorrhage to being merely life-threatening instead of catastrophic.  The crushing injuries she had sustained did not produce necrosis in her intestines, or her liver, but instead were slowly healing on their own.  Her burns were healing faster than they had expected.  Her other injuries…  She couldn’t remember the rest of the list they had given her.  All she knew right now was that her left leg was throbbing, and every movement made it ache more. 

She opened her eyes.  The lights were dimmed but brighter than they were when she kept waking up last night.  It must be getting close to morning.  She appreciated the reminder that some routines did not change.  The Normandy’s sleep-wake cycles were a comfort to her after the hectic environment of the Willamette.

Shepard reached down and rubbed her thigh, hoping to distract her nerves from one sensation with another.  She lay there on her back, wondering when Dr. Chakwas would be in for her morning rounds and medications.  It couldn’t come soon enough.

As if on her command the med-bay doors opened, but it wasn’t Karin walking through them.  Instead it was James, chuckling to himself as if he was doing something wrong and holding a covered plate in his hands.   

“Hey, Lola,” he said, letting the doors close behind him.  He walked over to the bed closest to her and sat down on it, putting the plate down on the desk beside him.  

“I thought Dr. Chakwas was making you all line up to see me,” Shepard said, the last syllable more grunt than word.  “What are you doing here this early?”

“Don’t tell the doc, but I snuck in,” James said.  “I won’t bother you long, I know you need your rest.  But I thought you could use something better than hospital food.  And I’m pretty sure Archangel over there wouldn’t know what to do with human food if it threw a grenade at him, so I figured I’d step up and help you out.”  He pulled off the cover from the dish, and the smell of fresh-cooked eggs wafted over to her.  Despite the pain in her leg the smell stirred something within her.  It smelled like home, like something tangible and real.

She looked at him, at his eager face, and she mustered a smile.  “Thanks, Vega,” she said, hoisting herself up onto her arms.  It was a painful process, but it was already easier than it had been yesterday.  

He handed her the plate and pulled out a fork from his pocket.  She balanced the plate on her lap, leaning forward.  “Don’t worry, the fork’s clean,” he said, passing it to her.  He looked closely at her for a moment, and the scrutiny made her want to duck her face and hide.  She resisted the urge.  In a low voice he said, “If there’s things you need to talk about… gotta get off your chest… let me know.  You’ve been there for me, Commander.  If you need a hand, I’m here.”  The serious look on his face vanished, replaced by a wink and a grin.  “Of course, if you just wanna spar, we can do that any time.”  

“I could take you on right now,” Shepard said, and immediately started coughing.  “Well… okay.  Maybe next week..”

“Counting on it,” said James.  He reached out a fist to her, and with one hand she bumped it in return, the hand that had fewer healing burns.  “Good to have you back, Lola,” he said, and hopped off the bed, heading out.

“Thanks,” she called after him, but her voice didn’t carry, and she wasn’t sure if he heard it.  Still, though, the eggs smelled good.  Probably the first decent-smelling thing she had encountered in days.  It was certainly better than the sting of smoke, the sear of flesh — 

No.  No, she wasn’t thinking about that.

She raised the fork and shoveled huevos rancheros into her mouth.  She was halfway through the plate before the taste of it registered.  The motions of eating were methodical, something she could lose herself in safely.  She swallowed, forcing herself to taste tomato, onion, adobo, cumin.  Anything that could place her here, in this bed, in this space was welcome.  Without an anchor she might drift back to a room with three choices, or to an Earth in shambles, or further back; Rannoch, Tuchanka, the Citadel, Virmire, Akuze.  Her tongue moved against egg and corn tortilla, and she chewed, focusing as much as she could on the simplest of actions.   

The rest of the eggs disappeared.  Her stomach felt uncomfortably full; she had been on light meals since they had allowed her to stop eating through a tube, and those meals had been protein pastes or carbohydrate mush.  She didn’t care.  She put the plate and fork down beside her and gently maneuvered herself back into a fetal position in bed.  

She must have fallen back into a restless doze, because when she opened her eyes again, she saw Dr. Chakwas taking away the empty plate.   

“Now, which of your loyal crew was sneaking in here this morning against doctor’s orders?” she asked, raising her eyebrows. 

“James,” Shepard mumbled.  As she came back to being awake, the pain in her leg began anew, and she gritted her teeth.  

“Are you all right, Commander?  Here, let’s get your morning checkup out of the way,” Dr. Chakwas said, kneeling beside Shepard and pulling her blankets down before beginning her exam.   

Shepard stared out of the windows of the med-bay as Dr. Chakwas gently touched the healing cuts on her face, shone a light in her eyes, checked her gum color.  She felt as if the doctor’s ministrations were happening to some other body that she happened to be in the same room with, not to herself.  The disconnected feeling persisted as her vitals were read.  The abdominal palpation made her wince, and the gentle handling of her left leg made her hiss.   

“I think we’ll need to go back up to the more frequent dosages of analgesics,” Dr. Chakwas murmured.  “That leg seems to be bothering you much more than I had expected.” 

“It hurts, yeah,” Shepard conceded.  She forced herself to drag her attention back to here and now.  “Listen, Karin…”

“Yes?” she said, entering the information from the exam into her omni-tool. 

“Is there something you can give me to help me sleep?”  Shepard avoided looking at the other woman, instead fixing her gaze on the wall.  “I’ve been having some trouble.”

“Is it because of your wounds?   Or is it more trying to get your mind to quiet down?” Dr. Chakwas asked gently.  “Admiral Hackett told me how traumatic the battle was.”  She shut down her omni-tool and began rummaging in the drawer beside Shepard’s cot. 

“Both, I guess,” Shepard said, unwilling to go into more details. “I just… I’d just like to get some sleep.” 

The doctor pulled out a few bottles of medicine.  Shepard watched from her bedside.  She remembered her parents talking about how hard it was to learn how to swallow a pill as children; now oral medications were usually in a transmucosal gel form that was absorbed within a few minutes.  Her parents had been so impressed by that.  Dr. Chakwas  transferred small quantities of gel into a shotglass-sized cup and passed it to Shepard, who licked it clean, letting the gel dissolve against her gums and under her tongue.  It tasted bitter.  Curiously she glanced at the bottles as the doctor put them away, noting names like   _fentanyl, ciprofloxacin, omeprazole, famotidine._   She handed the glass back to Dr. Chakwas, who said, “Not to worry.  We can start a sedative tonight to help you sleep.  It’s one with a mild amnesiac quality to it as well, which may help.  But Commander —”

“Yes?” Shepard asked.  She was starting to feel tired again.  

“I do have some training in post-traumatic stress disorder.  If you need someone to speak to, you know that anything you say is confidential.  And if you need more aid than I give you, Joker says we’ll be docked here for some time while they finish repairs.  There are a good many specialists on board some of these ships who may be able to help.”  Dr. Chakwas got to her feet.  “Physically you are doing acceptably well, given the extent of the injuries.  If you feel like visiting with some of the crew I’ll allow brief visits today.  You can even walk around the ship a bit, if you take this.”  She gestured to a cane leaning against the wall, gleaming silvery in the light.  Shepard stared hard at it.  “We should have had it for you yesterday but they didn’t send it over until later.  Things were a bit disorganized over there.  But if you’d rather rest, I’ll keep the horde at bay.  You may feel pretty sleepy as your pain medication kicks in again.” 

Shepard yawned.  “Maybe I’ll sleep a bit more, and let you know.”

“Just page me on the comm if I’m not in here,” Dr. Chakwas said.  “Of course, it’s a bit harder directing transmissions around the ship now.  I had gotten used to how efficient EDI made everything.”  She frowned, sighing.  “She did a lot for us.” 

Shepard lay back down, burrowing her face into the pillow despite the way it made her fresh scars sting.  “I know,” she said, and closed her eyes. 

She tried not to imagine EDI’s voice, the tilt of her head, her insistence that she was telling a joke.  She had to talk to Joker.  It was her duty as the commanding officer who had sent EDI to her death as surely as she had sent Ashley to hers.  She had handled it then.  She could handle this now. 

Couldn’t she? 

She could.  She knew it.  She just needed a few more days.  She wished she were recovered enough to be out of the med-bay.  She wanted nothing more right now than to bury herself in the blankets under the skylight, stars overhead, a warm, reassuring turian beside her.  She knew she had to talk to him, too.  She remembered what they had told her after Akuze.   _Talk about it._ Naming the terrors always made them easier to deal with, or that was the theory.  

Like viewing monsters under the bed, though, bringing her fears and guilt into the light was not an easy task.  What if the darkness, rather than magnifying the horror of her fears, hid the worst of it?  What if keeping quiet was the only thing keeping her from letting go?

Scores of geth fell before her, and instead of the chattering noise the heretic geth had released, she heard voices, begging with her.   _The geth build their own future,_  they called,  _do not take it away_.  The lights in their faces flickered out, and they lay there strewn across vast fields, sunlight glinting over their metal frames.  And she knew, as she stood among them, that it was not simply oneintelligence that had been snuffed out, but millions.  Billions.  Their future had lasted barely three hundred years and with a few bullets and a choice she had devastated that which she had hoped to see grow and thrive.  She had tried so hard on Rannoch, working with Legion and Tali.  She had wanted peace.  Cooperation.  Understanding.  Not metal corpses crushing the grass below them into the mud.  She stood among their fallen limbs, stepping on them, her boots slipping off of curved metal and wire.  Her weight forced them down into the earth and she stood as sentinel over their graves.  This was their future. 

Shepard woke up, panting.  There was a hand on her shoulder, which must have been what had brought her out of the nightmare.  Wild-eyed, she looked up to see Garrus sitting next to her.  He was out of his armor for once, wearing the green and blue outfit she had told him she liked.  It was rumpled as if he hadn’t cleaned it in some time. 

“Shhh, shhh,” he said, looking concerned.  For a moment she wondered where he had learned that noise, then realized she had taught him that.   _My mom used to say that after bad dreams.  It’s a human thing._

“Garrus,” she whispered, and before she thought about moving gently she thrust herself up to a sitting position and wrapped her arms around him.  Her abdomen protested with a sharp pain, but she clung to him, burying her face in the space between his neck and the curve of his carapace.  His arms slid around her back and waist, and he leaned his head against hers, exhaling.  

“Bad dream?” he asked. 

“Missed you,” she said.  It wasn’t really like she was lying, she reflected.  She had missed him desperately.  She simply didn’t need to tell him every time she had a nightmare.  But the omission still felt wrong, and she shoved the feeling down deep, deep, into the dark.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I couldn't resist throwing in some medical terms (I am a veterinarian when I'm not writing fanfic). ...they may come up again.


	8. Walkabout

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Garrus and Shepard take a walk.

Garrus felt sluggish.  His head throbbed quietly in the background, a reminder of his attempt to drown his fears in hard liquor last night.  He shook his head, trying to clear it, but it only served to make him feel slightly discombobulated.  He was annoyed that he had not woken up earlier to see Shepard, but he was here now.

Shepard sat in front of him, wearing a patient’s gown that looked like an oversized dress.  Her legs were bare below the knee, dangling over the side of the bed.  Those human feet — he still found them charming in their strangeness.  Five stubby toes crowning a long flat metatarsus.  Even her feet were not unscathed; he spied a bruise on one ankle, and a ripped toenail.  Shepard’s hands were folded loosely in her lap, and he swallowed to see the scarred skin on her forearms.  She looked up at him, as if feeling his gaze on her.  

“I think I’d like to walk around a little,” said Shepard.  “I might go a little crazy if I stay in here all day.”  She sighed, rubbing at her temples.  Garrus winced to see the way her fingers avoided the new scars on her face, which still looked thin and fragile, barely-healed.  She was beautiful, always had been; though admittedly it had taken him some time to learn human standards of beauty and to stop thinking of how different she was from a turian.  She was still beautiful, between the scars, the tousled, uneven hair (had part of it been burned away? he was afraid to ask), and the hospital gown.  But it made him ache to see the way she moved so gingerly, or the way her fingers danced over new wounds.

“We could make it a date,” Garrus said.  “You, me, the observation window down the hall… you bring your beautiful self and I’ll bring, well, this fine specimen of turian manhood.”  He gestured to himself, preening.  He could sense the fragility in her mood, and wanted to bolster it as much as he could.

Shepard chuckled, though the sound turned into a cough at the end.  “You sound like a romance novel.  Actually, ‘manhood’ is a silly euphemism for a human penis, so you’d better make sure you know what you’re offering.”

Garrus choked.  “Uh, let’s not bring one of those into this equation.  Besides, I thought that once you went turian, you never went back.”

“Of course,” said Shepard.  “I told you I’m a one-turian woman, and I meant it.”  She smiled, the dimple in her cheek deepening.  Garrus reached out and traced it with a gloved talon, and she closed her eyes to feel his touch.  “I love you,” she said.

He let his hand fall.  “I’m glad you’re feeling better today, Shepard.  How’s the leg?”

“Not good.  Dr. Chakwas says I should probably use this if I walk around.”  She reached out and tapped the cane by her bedside.  “I sort of remember the other doctors telling me there was nerve damage.  They said it will likely heal over time, but it’s going to be slow.”  She shrugged.  “At least I’m not dead for two years this time.”

“I’m definitely glad for that,” said Garrus.  “Though thinking you were dead for even a week wasn’t exactly… fun.”  The ache in his head twinged at the thought.

Shepard bit her lip.  “I’m sorry.”  She reached out to his shoulder and used him as leverage to pull herself up, and he helped, lifting her half of the way as he got to his feet.  

“Don’t be,” he said firmly.  “You were in a coma, from what I hear.  I’m not annoyed that you didn’t send me an extranet message saying ‘Garrus, good news, I’m not dead this time after all.’  I’m just glad you’re here.”  He pressed a kiss to the part in her hair.  Its texture had been strange to him at first, but now he loved the way it felt against his face or between his fingers.  Such an odd adaptation, but he loved its softness.

Shepard looked down at the gown sagging around her.  “I can’t go on a walk in this.  Where are my clothes?”

Garrus glanced around and saw a neatly folded pile of clothing on the counter — her casual fatigues.  He retrieved them for her and set them on the bed.  The windows to the med-bay were dimmed, and no one could see in or out.  “I can help you get dressed,” he said.  

She smiled.  “You just want to see me naked,” she accused, pulling at the collar of her gown and trying to lift it over her head.

He bunched the fabric beneath his fingers, and gently lifted it the rest of the way.  “I won’t pretend that’s not true.”  He tossed the gown onto the bed and let out a sigh, seeing her skin bare before him.  He winced again to see a dark bruise over her abdomen, healing scratches over her torso and breasts, the way the muscle had withered in her left leg until it was thinner than her right.

“You okay?” she asked.  She had been reaching for her clothes, but paused, looking carefully at his face.  She glanced down at the wounds, studying them.  

“I let this happen to you,” Garrus said, the guilt welling up in him.  He had been trying so hard to keep things light, and normal, and safe for her sake, but he couldn’t even manage to keep up his end of the bargain.  He reached out and traced the lines of scars, avoiding the discolored, puffy-looking areas that seemed tender.  “Because I wasn’t with you at the end.”

“No,” Shepard said, the vehemence in her voice surprising him.  Her eyes narrowed, and her jaw tightened.  She was naked and she was unsteady on her feet, and she gripped his hand with a measure of her old ferocity, holding it still.  “Don’t you dare, Garrus.  I made that call.  And I would’ve kicked your ass if you’d disobeyed it.  I am not going to let you blame yourself for this.  You’ve saved my life too many times for this to somehow count against you.”  She squeezed his fingers, more gently this time.  “Now.  Are you going to help me get dressed?”

“I can do that.”  He was quiet while he helped her into her underclothes, holding her steady while she pulled on her panties, buckling her bra together for her, helping her into her pants and shirt.  He sat her down on the bed and had her hold her legs out for him to put socks and boots on.  The boots surprised him.  He had never quite realized how small they were compared to turian shoes.  It took him a moment to figure out the straps on the front.

As he helped her, part of him bristled at what she had said.  Of course he knew it was her call.  But didn’t she understand that he wasn’t just another member of the crew anymore?  He was  _hers_.  If he was just her crewmate, he would have been able to let it go sooner.  Like last time.  He tried never to think about the attack on the SR-1, but when he thought back to that time, he had not felt guilty.  He had wondered if the outcome would have been different if he was still on board, and he had grieved for the loss of his friend and commander.  It was different now.  This was the woman he loved, and no matter what the scenario, he would always feel guilty now if anything happened to her. 

But another part of him understood what she was saying.  Because if he had disobeyed her and been the one shredded to pieces, or had died running up to that beam, she would be here feeling the same heavy guilt, and he would be the one telling her to knock it off.  He wouldn’t be able to bear the idea of her blaming herself for what had happened to him.

Shepard reached out and took hold of the cane, weighing it in her hand.  She tapped it against the floor.  It made a tinny sound.  “Watch out,” she said.  “Old Lady Shepard coming through.”  She took a few steps forward, and Garrus watched the way that she leaned upon it, hitching her left leg up higher than the right, using the limb as lightly as possible.  She might joke about it, but he saw the way she needed the cane.

He followed along after her, opening the doors for her.  She stepped out into the mess area, glancing around.  A few ensigns were sitting at the table, playing poker.  They glanced up and saw her, and leapt to attention in eager salutes.  “Commander!  Good to see you,” Ensign Copeland said sharply.  “Glad you’re up and about, ma’am.”

“Relax and get back to your poker game, Copeland,” Shepard said.  “That’s an order.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he said, unable to keep a grin from his face.  He and the other ensigns sat back down, hurriedly breaking into whispered discussion, their poker game forgotten.

Shepard shook her head, smiling.  “I guess people are excited to have me back,” she said to Garrus, heading for the lounge in her new, slow walk.  

“We may have had a party last night to celebrate,” said Garrus.  “And I may have had entirely too much brandy.”  

“Is that why you look like hell?” Shepard asked, extending one hand to touch his chin, directing his face up and down so she could take a good look at him.

“Was it that obvious?” Garrus groaned.

“Let’s see,” she said as they rounded the corner by the elevator.  “Your clothes look like you slept in them.  Your eyes are sunken in, the way they get when you’re exhausted.  You keep touching your head like it hurts, and your visor is skewed to one side.  Oh, and your breath still smells like brandy.”  She gave him a look of mock disapproval.  “I can’t believe you didn’t invite me.”

Garrus laughed.  “Well, it’s good to know I can’t fool you.”

“Damn straight,” she said, going past the memorial wall.  She stopped, noticed the new names: Anderson and EDI.  She became very still. 

Garrus slid a hand onto her shoulder.  “When the Crucible fired, the fleet fled.  ….Including us.  But the relays were damaged, and when EDI went down — we crash landed.  It took a few days to get back on our feet, and people needed something to do.” 

“So they updated the memorial wall,” Shepard said stiffly.

Garrus hesitated.  “I refused to add your name.”

She whipped her head around to stare at him.  “They were going to put me up there?”

He nodded, dipping his head toward her.  “They made the plate, and I was supposed to put it up.  I couldn’t, Shepard.”

She turned away from the wall, and continued walking, shrugging off his hand.  She was silent the rest of the way to the lounge, which took a few minutes at her slower pace.  The cane ticked against the floor, and Garrus followed.  He hadn’t meant to tell her about the memorial yet.  He thought of the plate, sitting in the main battery.  He had meant to follow Javik’s advice and throw it out of the airlock, but he had gotten distracted by her return.

They entered the lounge, which was empty.  Shepard sat heavily down on the nearest couch.  He realized she looked pale, and he hurried to sit down beside her.

“Are you all right?” he asked.  “Maybe we shouldn’t have had you walking around just yet.” 

She slumped against the cushions, breathing a little heavily.  “I’m okay.  A little worn out, but it’s fine.  I’m fine.”  She looked out at the observation window, gazing steadily at the stars.  The view was somewhat marred with debris and wreckage drifting past, evidence of the recent destruction, instead of the clear stars of the Sol system.  

“Shepard….”

“What do you want me to say, Garrus?” she snapped.   

“Hey.  Hey, look at me.”  He touched her face, and she reluctantly looked at him out of the corner of her eyes.  “I want you to talk to me.” 

She shrugged.  “I should.  I know that.”  She smiled, but there was a tremble to her lips he had not seen before.  “But I don’t know how,” she whispered.

He hugged her, pulling her close to him.  She leaned her head against his carapace, and he could feel her shaking.   

“I’m going to help you,” he promised.  “You don’t have to do this by yourself.”  He felt fiercely protective of the small woman he sheltered beneath his arm, and he wished, not for the first time, that their positions were reversed.  He would hate it, of course, if it were him.  He had been furious after being wounded on Omega, even while he flickered in and out of consciousness.  He had hated feeling like a burden.

But he knew Shepard hated it more.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> uggggh these two make me feel SO MANY THINGS


	9. Different Paths

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shepard tries to talk to Garrus, but finds it more difficult than she had feared.

Shepard leaned against Garrus on the couch in the lounge, trying to ignore the way she felt so winded.  It was only a brief walk down the hall from the medi-bay to the lounge.  She had walked or jogged that distance a million times before in a tenth the time it had taken her today.  She knew she shouldn’t be upset at herself for the way she had to lean so strongly on the cane, or the way she felt so tired after fifteen minutes with Garrus.  Yet she was.

“Do you want to talk?” he asked.   

She tried to slow her breathing and steady her hands.  She glanced up at him.  He looked so tired.  She knew he wouldn’t have drank so heavily if he was feeling fine; even at her party he had been bright and alert the next morning.  Most likely he was worried about her.  She couldn’t decide if she wanted to give him more to worry about, or if she wanted to keep trying to pretend that she was fine.

So she asked him.  “What would you do if you were me, Garrus?” 

“Mm, hard to say,” he said, reaching for her hand and slipping his fingers between hers.  “What sort of scenario do you have in mind?” 

Shepard looked at their clasped hands, his three fingers to her five.  The sight soothed her.  She liked all the different configurations she had discovered for fitting their hands together.  The thumbs were easy enough; no matter what one always entwined the other.  But his second and third digits might slip between her middle and ring fingers, or index and middle; sometimes both his fingers curled around her whole palm.  To think that she had clung to life by the narrowest of margins, and almost missed this.  Almost missed him.. 

“Do you want to know what happened after I left you?”  She stayed leaning against him as she was, looking down at their hands.  It was easier than watching his face.

“If you’re ready to tell me.”  He squeezed her hand. 

Shepard closed her eyes, and the images were there, roiling forth in brilliant color.  She could smell the stench of the battlefield.  The heat of the beam throbbed against her, and her feet scraped on the shattered ground.  “Harbinger attacked.  I was knocked back.  When I came to, I could barely walk.  Half my armor had been burned away, and most of my weapons were destroyed.”  

He shifted against her side, listening quietly.  

“But I had to get to the beam.  That was the point of everything — the loss of all those lives, you and Tali getting wounded… I had to get to the beam.  I took care of a few husks, a marauder.  I could hardly think straight, but I knew I had to get there.”  Shepard remembered those hazy moments and the drive to keep moving, keep going.  Could she do it again, if she knew what she did now?  She did not think so. 

A sensation of rushing, falling upward against the pull of gravity, weightlessness.  “The beam shot me up to the Citadel, and Anderson was already there.  He was injured, too.  Badly.  That’s where we found the Illusive Man.”

“He was there?” said Garrus, his voice half a growl.  “Son of a bitch….”

“He was indoctrinated.  Whatever he was, wasn’t there anymore.  Like Saren. He may have had good intentions, long ago, but up there all he could talk about was controlling the Reapers, even though it was obvious they controlled him.  I managed to kill him, but Anderson didn’t make it.”  She spoke in a flat, measured voice, the way she had when speaking to Hackett yesterday.  But Hackett was distant.  He didn’t know her the way Garrus did, and she had been able to keep the enormity of what had happened at bay, speaking to a man who was more than a stranger but not a friend.  Her heart quickened.  She didn’t know if she could manage telling him.

“Anderson was a good man,” Garrus said softly, his mandible moving against the side of her face.  It had been so surprising the first time she saw a turian speak, even more so the first time she reached up and touched his face, the soft skin beneath his fringe, the curve of the mandible, the tougher skin of his carapace.  It felt comforting to her now.  “We were all honored to have worked with him.”

“So was I,” said Shepard.  She missed Anderson, yes, but his had been a brave death.  A better death than what she had expected for herself, because he had not been forced to see what happened next.  In a way she envied him, but she did not speak that aloud.

“What happened next?”

“I… I looked for a console, anything, to activate the Crucible.   I could hardly stand.  I was in a space in the Citadel I’d never been, and there was this… thing.”  She could not keep the edge of hatred out of her voice.  “An AI.  It said it controlled the Reapers.  It said I was the first organic to ever make it this far.  It said the Reapers were created to keep organics and synthetics from destroying each other, because conflict between the two was inevitable, and the Reapers would eliminate advanced races to keep them from building synthetics.  It sounded like a lot of bullshit to me, but then again I’ve never seen eye to eye with a Reaper.”  She forced a laugh but it sounded false even to her.  “The AI said I had a choice.”  The word choice came out choked, like a sob, and she pressed hard against Garrus as if she could will herself to disappear into him.  She could feel nausea rising in her belly, and her skin felt cold and clammy.  She shivered. 

“You’re all right, Shepard,” he said, his voice a low murmur in her ear.  “You’re here with me.”

She reminded herself of that.  She was here on a couch in her ship, looking out at the stars of her system, with her boyfriend holding her hand and his arms around her.  She wasn’t in that room.  Whatever she had chosen, it was over.  She tried to tell herself this, over and over again in a litany as if saying it could make it true.  But she still felt a peculiar sensation of being in both places at once, and she tried to shake it.

“What were the choices?”

“It gave me three,” she breathed.  “It said I could create a lasting peace between all organics, and all synthetics… by merging them.  Forever.  I would die, and it would use my body in the Crucible to bring organic traits to synthetics like the geth, and all organics would have a part of the synthetic in them.  Then the Reapers would stop, and all of the knowledge they’d gained over millennia would be shared.”  

Garrus was quiet for a minute, as if trying to figure out what to say.  She had been stunned, too, to think of the implications.  In characteristic fashion he tried to lighten the mood.  “I’m guessing you didn’t choose that one,” said Garrus.  “At least, I don’t seem to see any shiny new cybernetics.”  He held out his free hand and examined it.  “Nope, looks good to me.” 

Shepard paused.  “It felt like a violation to me,” she said slowly.  “Think about it.  Every organism altered.  Forever.  One person shouldn’t have that responsibility.  Even if that’s what I wanted for myself, what right do I have to decide that for an entire galaxy of people?” Anger burned in her, and she rejoiced in it.  It was safer than feeling afraid.

“No one should have that responsibility,” Garrus said.  “I know there’s a few who would leap at that idea.  Half of Cerberus seemed to think it was a great plan.  But the cybernetics I got after Omega are more than enough for me.  There was no way to choose who would be changed and who wouldn’t?”

“All or nothing,” she said.

Garrus considered.  “What would have happened to all the different races?  Would they still be themselves?  Would they still have their cultures?  Or would it be like some kind of hive mind?”  He shuddered.  “I’m glad you chose against that, then.  And selfishly, I’m glad you didn’t die for it,” he said, his thumb tracing circles against the back of her hand.  “What were the other two choices?”

She stared down at her shoes, clumsily applied by Garrus.  She had never seriously considered synthesis between organics and synthetics.  Despite her ties to Legion and EDI, and her sympathies towards the geth, she did not understand why things would be better if they were more organic, or if organics were more synthetic.  To her mind it seemed that the richer the diversity of the galaxy, the better.  Krogan, asari, turian, human, geth, AI, drell - all of them, and the others, seemed unique.  Sentient life was sentient life, but there was no reason it could not thrive in its diversity.  Changing all lifeforms into some kind of hybrid without their consent seemed monstrous, a larger-scale version of the Reapers’ combining ship and species. 

But the other two choices….  Her stomach churned at the thought of them, and she wanted to tell him that she was tired and needed to go back to sleep.  It would not be a lie; for all she knew, Dr. Chakwas might be searching for her now, annoyed at whomever had taken her out of the med-bay without letting her know.  She could save it for another day, when she was stronger.  

Her heart sank.  She did not truly believe that she was going to feel any stronger than she did right now, whether it be in a day, a week, a month, a year.  She wasn’t strong.  The only reason she was still here was luck and Cerberus upgrades, not because of anything special she had done.  Just like after the SR-1’s destruction.  Just like after Akuze.

She hung her head, trying to make herself speak.  _You have to talk about it_ _,_ she told herself sternly.  She knew what everyone, even Garrus, thought of her — she was strong, she was capable, she knew what she was doing.  Right now it all felt accidental, as if she were some imposter that had managed to keep them fooled.  She felt like crumbling and she felt like running — and neither was an option.   

“Shepard?” Garrus asked, startling her from her thoughts.  “We don’t have to do this right now.”

She tried to make her mouth work, and managed a croak.  “I know that I should,” she said.  “But I don’t think I can.” 

“Okay,” said Garrus simply.  “Then we won’t.”  He nudged her cheek with his, leaning down, and the contact made her feel a little less awful.  She was ashamed at not being able to finish, but grateful he had let her stop.  

They spent a few moments in silence, leaning against each other, the window before them.  Shepard remembered the lives that had been lost in this war; the widespread devastation, panic, and fear.  Her mind seethed with thresher maws and Reapers, husks and marauders, an unceasing parade of smoke and destruction, sweat and fear.

Outwardly, she tried to look calm, forcing the tightened muscles in her face to relax.  She had to stop dwelling on it, but the more she tried to think of anything else, the more she felt swarmed by everything she was trying to avoid.  

She let out a long breath through her nose, her lips pinched shut.  If only there was some way to turn her mind off and stop the barrage of images.  But she couldn’t think of what might help, and instead she settled for focusing on Garrus next to her.  She had to pull it together.  She had to.


	10. Vengeance and Mourning

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Javik considers the future. Traynor considers the past.

Javik stood in the observation lounge.  The war was over; the great struggle of endless numbers of cycles finally ceased.  He watched the human Alliance starships scurrying back and forth through the debris field, beginning the long, slow slog of rebuilding. 

Vengeance.  For so long he had searched for it, dreamed of it, bled for it.  Now the killing blow had fallen, and he could rest. 

He did not feel rested.

It occurred to him that his people had had no plan in place for what would happen if the Crucible succeeded.  For too long their lives had been focused on one thing only, the elimination of the Reapers.  Without it, who would they be?

The question felt academic to him, something that Dr. T’soni would ask.  It held no meaning for him, yet it continued to hover around the back of his consciousness.  He knew what he desired to do now — to go and lay his men, and himself, to rest — but until the mass relays were found to be serviceable again, he would not be leaving the Sol system. 

He touched the material of the observation window before him.  There were traces here of many hands — how many people had found it necessary to smear their handprints over this window? He supposed he could not blame them, as he was doing it himself .  Most recently, he sensed the touches of Commander Shepard and the turian Vakarian.  He found their union puzzling, though they both seemed to draw great strength from it.  He thought back fondly to the taste of roasted turian leg, and sighed; those days would not be repeated. 

None of their days would be.  Now that the great cycle was ended, the chains that had lain across the galaxy were removed.  The future was theirs.   

The touches of Shepard and Vakarian on the window imparted new information to him.  Vakarian was consumed with eddies of conflicting emotions: exultation at the survival of the Commander, vestiges of the grief he had felt when they had thought she had died, uncertainty, fear, protectiveness.  The Commander, however — Javik was surprised.  When he had first contacted her after his pod was reopened, she was an infuriating bundle of emotions despite her battle-hardened demeanor.  Hope, dread, curiosity, fear, love, regret; they had all been there, and he had been less with impressed at her primitive devotion to such feelings.

Now, there were only faint echoes of those things that had once shown brilliantly in her.  She still cared for the turian and her friends on this ship, and she felt a bitter, pungent sadness for the events of the war.  Guilt was the predominant feeling that he sensed, but strangest was the fact that these feelings had been heavily muted.  The vibrancy in which they had once glowed was dulled.  If he had not already read the human before, he doubted he would have been able to pick up her traces on the window today, they were so subtle.  The feelings echoed in her the way a dropped stone echoed in a deep ravine; the emptiness itself amplified them.  From what he could tell, the Commander seemed pithed of the things that had made up her substance before.  There was only suffering now amid the emptiness.

Javik considered the stars before him.  Perhaps this was the curse of all who faced war for too long.  He remembered flickers of his old life, faces that he had grown to care for, moments of laughter against the darkness of their lives.  These things had been stripped of him, subsumed in the fight against the Reapers and the march of the cycle.  All that remained was vengeance.

Yet that was gone, too, and the days of the galaxy moved forward.  It was a strange time to be alive.  He was not sure he liked it. 

*** 

Samantha stood in the AI core, head tilted to one side as she examined EDI’s  mobile platform.  She shook her head.  Not mobile platform. _Body._ The Normandy may have been the seat of EDI’s processing, but this metallic humanoid form laid out before her was her body.  

She had been on the bridge when Joker called for help, when the whole ship started veering out of control.   She had run up to the front while the ship rolled, stumbling against the sudden changes in acceleration.  Joker had been frantically wrestling the controls, and EDI, instead of helping him, was slumped in the chair with one arm spilling over the side, her legs bent strangely, her head tilted back at an angle the unit had not been designed for.   

Joker had managed to land the ship on a planet nobody recognized.  But once they had settled he had dived out of his chair to EDI’s side and started shaking her, pleading with her.  Samantha had felt like a gawking spectator.  Kaidan and James pushed past her to kneel down next to Joker.  She had gone back to the bridge to try and get the communications up, trying not to think about the way they had left Shepard or the way she could still hear Joker’s frantic pleading.

Now Samantha stood here, gazing down at EDI’s body.  A small memorial area had sprung up beside the metallic form.  There were a few datapads stacked beside EDI, one of them from Samantha.  She had written down all the things she wished she had asked EDI, the conversations she had hoped to share with her one day.  There were strips of lighting material, taken from a damaged part of the ship and set here instead, illuminating her with a softer glow than the overhead lights.  Joker’s Alliance sweatshirt lay across EDI’s chest, folded to look as if she was wearing it.  

Samantha reached out hesitantly and touched EDI’s shoulder, which was smooth and cold and as lifeless as the bulkhead next to her.  “I’m sorry, EDI,” she said, her voice muffled by the whir of machinery in the core.  The machines were on, in a vague hope that they would somehow self-repair and bring back that spark, that person that she was.  But they had been on for days and there were no changes.

She wondered if EDI could be restored.  Perhaps if they were able to find some of the Cerberus programmers who had built her in the first place.  She wanted to ask Tali if she thought that EDI’s sentience could be regained, but she had not summoned the courage.  Tali was friendly but she still had seen so much more than Samantha, and had been on the Normandy so much longer.  She still felt shy talking with the quarian over breakfast, let alone bringing up artificial intelligence to someone who had only just regained their homeworld after centuries of conflict with synthetics.  It just seemed like such an awkward topic of conversation. 

So she tried to content herself with getting their communications array back in full working order.  It had been a nightmare at first, until she finally managed to triangulate weak signals from Alliance ships.  That was how they found out about the geth, and the mass relays being damaged, though not destroyed.  But the communications they received, even from ships in the same system, were still patchy and prone to distortion.   She worked on it because she did not know what else to do with herself, and because they had heard no further word from the Alliance.  

Hackett had been pleased to see the ship again, she had heard, but beyond that, there had been little new communication after they had come back to Sol.  The Normandy was being repaired at a hastily assembled dock above Earth, but her crew was in limbo; they were not needed for any assignments currently, but there was little point releasing them for shore leave given the state of Earth below them.   

Samantha let go of EDI’s shoulder, noticing that the metal had grown warm under her touch.  She smiled ruefully.  “You know this ship doesn’t work right without you, EDI,” she said aloud.  “We miss you.  Joker’s going to take you to Tiptree, did you know?  We’ll all be there to say — well, to say goodbye.”    

She sighed.  She had thought that coming down here again to see EDI might help her come to terms with it, but  instead she felt worse.  She was looking down at EDI’s body surrounded by the hardware of her mind, and neither were alive anymore.  She hated it.

“Back to work,” she sighed, turning and walking away, leaving the still body behind her.  She passed into the med-bay, which had been empty when she had come down to visit EDI.  Now Commander Shepard was laying down in the bed nearest the AI Core doors.  Garrus sat in a chair next to her, his eyes closed as if he was napping.  Dr. Chakwas stood nearby, typing into her console.  Samantha hurried out, nodding at Dr. Chakwas as she walked past.  She wished she had had a chance to say hello to the Commander, but she did not want to disturb her.  

An unpleasant thought formed in her head on the way to the elevator.  Shepard had looked like she was laying flat on her back in that bed, arms at her sides, head rolled over to one side on her pillow, eyes closed, expression vacant.

Like that, she thought that EDI’s body and Shepard’s looked very much alike.

“Don’t be so morbid,” she said under her breath.  Her eyes burned.  But the thought refused to leave,  and it gave her a strange, painful feeling in her chest.   _Shepard’s going to be fine_ , she thought.  But instead of feeling hopeful, all she felt was sad.


	11. The Deep and Lonely Places

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shepard hits rock bottom, and it's a lonely place. 
> 
> Content warning: discussion of previous character deaths, nightmares, violence, suicidal ideation.

Shepard groaned.  She slowly came back to herself,  and realized that someone was kicking her in the side.  Strangely, it did not hurt.

“Come on, Skipper,” Ashley said, toeing her with her boot.  “You can’t expect us to leave you on the ground like that.”  She reached down, and took hold of Shepard’s hand, pulling her to her feet. Shepard scrambled up, leaning on her.  She realized that both of her legs felt fine, strong even.

“What happened, Ash?” Shepard asked.   

“You got a little too rowdy,” Ashley said, chuckling.  Her hair was down, and she was in casual uniform instead of her heavy armor.  She looked carefree in a way Shepard had never seen her look before.  “You fell right off the barstool.”

Shepard looked around.  The room was strangely lacking in detail when she looked at it as a whole, though when she focused on specific corners she could pick out more information.  They seemed to be in a bar, but the lights were sometimes dim and sometimes far too bright.  There was no music, yet Shepard felt strongly that there was some kind of party happening.  Directly in front of them was a bar, with people clustering around it, jockeying for position.

“Sorry,” said Shepard, “I didn’t mean to make any trouble.”

“I’m surprised trouble’s not your middle name,” Ashley said with great skepticism.  “I won’t believe it’s not until I see your birth certificate.”

“That would be telling,” said Shepard.  “Hey, how do we get a drink in this place, anyway?”

Ashley grinned.  “Come on over here, we’ve got a table set up.”  Shepard followed her, marveling at the way she could move so easily.  There was no cane.  She glanced down at herself and saw that she was wearing the light yellow sundress Liara had given her.  Her legs looked smooth with no scars or bruises anywhere. 

She found herself sitting down at the table.  Ashley turned to Thane , who was pouring a drink into two glasses.  She took one and passed Shepard the other.  “Thane’s just been telling me about his trip to New Mexico.  I’ve always loved the desert, haven’t you?”

“I haven’t been to many deserts,” said Shepard.  “Thane, good to see you.  How’s Kolyat?” 

“He is well,” said Thane, smiling at her.  He looked strong and hale sitting next to Ashley, his eyes vibrant.  “He’s making sure to stay out of trouble.  I believe I have gotten into enough trouble for the both of us.”

“There’s that word again,” said Ashley.  “Let’s not worry about that.  Thane, you said you were going to teach me some new throws and holds?”   

“Certainly,” said Thane.  “A soldier can always benefit from brushing up on hand-to-hand combat.  Would you care to join us, Shepard?” 

“I don’t know,” she said, taking a sip of her drink, which seemed to have no flavor.  “I haven’t felt like sparring lately.  Maybe I’ll just relax here.”  She took another sip, wishing it was a gin and tonic.  “You two go on and have fun.   Ash, you’re gonna love this.  Thane’s got moves like you wouldn’t believe.”  She reached out to clap his shoulder, grinning at him.  “I’ve missed you, Thane.”

“Your loss, then,” said Ashley. 

Shepard finished her drink.  Ashley and Thane had left, though she was not sure where they had gone.  The room’s dimensions changed and closed in until she was sitting  in a booth instead of at a table.  She looked down at her hands, which were smooth and clean.   Blue-skinned hands placed a drink before her. 

“Commander,” said Benezia, nodding at her.  “Liara wanted me to bring this over for you.  She was always bothered that she was never able to introduce us properly.”  Her dark eyes were kind, but sad.  Shepard could see the family resemblance in them, and for a moment, she remembered laughing with Liara on shore leave, building a blanket fort in their hotel room on the Citadel.  Liara had never done that before, and Shepard after a few drinks had grabbed Liara’s hand and used their biotics to hold up a fort.  They’d kissed and gasped and laughed beneath the blankets, then lay there panting until they fell asleep curled up together.  She smiled fondly.  That had been just before the Normandy  was—   She stopped herself.  That didn’t matter here.

“She told me a lot of wonderful things about you,” said Shepard.  “I’m sorry we couldn’t have met under better circumstances.”

“When you’ve lived as long as I have, you learn to stop regretting some things,” said Benezia urgently.  “But other regrets will always haunt you.  Choose well, Shepard.”  She bowed her head and stepped away.  Shepard watched her go with some concern. 

“Shepard,” said Mordin, sliding into the booth across from her.  Shepard happily turned away from watching Benezia leave, grateful for the distraction.  “Glad you’re here.  Been meaning to share this with you.”  He upended a box of seashells on the table, and they scattered everywhere but did not break.  “Earth seashells surprisingly complex.  Will show you.”  He sorted them into ten piles, scanning his omni-tool over them.  “Had thought Kahje would have widest assortment of seashells, but Earth’s are proving better.”   

“Mordin!  Where have you been?  Wrex and Bakara — Eve — are naming their  firstborn after you,” Shepard blurted.  The thought seemed jarring and discordant with the mood of relaxed conversation, and she could not put her finger on why.  What could be wrong with that?

“Krogan named Mordin.  Thought is strangely charming,” said Mordin, the corners of his mouth twitching upward into a smile.  “Never reproduced.  Too busy.  Urdnot Mordin sounds like fine legacy,” he said.  “But don’t distract me, Shepard.  This work too important.”

“I can help you with some of your analyses, Mordin.  It will take only seconds to catalogue all of the seashells you have collected, and begin data collection, “ said EDI, leaning against the table.  “Hello, Shepard.  Thank you for coming tonight.” 

“I was invited, wasn’t I?” asked Shepard.  It disquieted her to not be able to remember how she had gotten here.  “So this is your party?” 

“It is everyone’s party, Shepard.  Some of us have arrived early,” said EDI.  She gave Shepard a knowing wink.  “I hope that you are feeling better.  I have heard that you were under the weather.” 

“I’m fine,” Shepard protested, but as soon as she opened her mouth, pain hit her.  It felt as if a knife was being twisted deep in the meat of her thigh, and she gasped with it.  Her whole body ached, and she was hungry for air.  The bar was gone.  There was fire and flame, and she whirled around, looking desperately for Mordin, EDI, Thane, Ash.  She collapsed, falling out of the booth onto the ground.  She dimly registered that her dress was singed and ragged, hanging off of her in shreds.  She tried getting to her hands and knees and one wrist buckled beneath her, slamming her painfully to the ground.

“Shepard-Commander,” Legion’s voice uttered.  “Please help us.”

She lifted her head, the effort required to do so unbearable.  Legion lay crumpled before her, its face light flickering, the panels around the light whirring up and down.  Its fingers reached toward her, grasping weakly.  “The geth build their own future,” she said to him, tasting blood. 

“We do not,” said Legion.

“We do not,” said a chorus of geth, their voices cold and staticky.  She realized that behind Legion were piles and piles of geth corpses, limbs tangled in knots, lights flashing.  Sometimes an arm or a leg moved, and she could see that each pile was faintly writhing with the number of organisms in it.  She smelled camphor and the metallic tang of geth hydraulic lubricant and the copper-rich scent of human blood.  

Shepard screamed at them.  How dare they lay there!  Didn’t they know there was a war on?  They needed to help her, goddammit, and instead they had fallen like broken children’s toys.  She clawed her way up to a sitting position, then staggered upright, dragging her leg.  The pistol in her hand felt  feather-light.

She took a step over Thane’s corpse.  The red of his neck patches was a dull congested purple, and his eyes were tacky and dry when she tried to close them so that they would not look at her.  Ashley had collapsed where she stood, pierced with many bullets.  Shepard stared at them in hatred.  How dare they weaken her like this.  She needed them.  She needed all of them, and they were giving up!

Mordin lay facedown in the water, waves lapping against his body.  The ocean stretched before them, immense and dotted with the vertical shapes of Reapers descending.  Mordin’s medical jacket floated on the surf, but his face lay submerged.  She kicked him away, her chest heaving.  She fired one, two, three shots against the Reapers on the horizon, but they did not respond.   

“Stop it,” she snarled.  “Stop it!”  She stumbled backwards, away from the water at her ankles, and fell onto her face in the sand.  She dug through the damp sand until she was on solid ground on a London street, and the corpses of geth towered higher than the ruined rubble of human buildings.  She hauled herself up to her feet once more.  

In front of her, EDI was dragging Legion’s body to safety.  One of her synthetic eyes had been scorched away, and sparks emitted from the joints of her elbows and knees.  Legion gripped her hands, its head weakly bobbing as it was dragged.  Smoke roiled around them from the ruins of the geth. 

“Stop,” Shepard pled, but she did not know who she wanted to respond.  She lifted her pistol, biting her inner cheek so hard that blood filled her mouth.   

“You have no future,” she spat, and she pulled the trigger.  EDI collapsed.  The light in Legion’s face went out. 

In the stillness that followed, she realized that Garrus was standing by her side.  He slipped his arms around her.  “You’re a good person,” he said.  He was close enough that she could feel his voice vibrating in her chest, subharmonics stirring in the silence.  “The best woman I’ve ever known.” 

“Don’t you dare lie to me,” she warned, blood pouring out of her mouth so that it obscured her words.  Her voice bubbled through it.  She pulled him down to kiss her.  When he pulled back, he was smiling tenderly at her through the human blood smeared on his mouth plates and mandibles.   

She screamed.  She didn’t stop, even when she raised her pistol, even when she fired, even when Garrus fell.  She would never stop.

 

***

 

“No!” Shepard shouted, throwing herself to the side in an attempt to escape.  She reached out frantically as she fell, her limbs smashing into the ground.

She lay there panting on the floor.  There was no smell of smoke, no taste of blood.  There was a blanket wrapped around her.  She was not wearing a ruined sundress, but a wrinkled sleeping gown.  It was dark and she could smell a faint medical odor.  

“It was a dream,” she whispered to herself.  Her body quaked, and she fought a powerful wave of nausea, the events of the dream replaying sickeningly.  She saw the bodies of her friends again, the towers of fallen geth, and then Garrus — Garrus —

She rolled to one side and vomited, her stomach muscles contracting powerfully, sending a fresh wave of pain through her.  Her dinner scraped against her esophagus as she retched again and again, her eyes watering.  She choked up the rest of her stomach contents, gagging on the bitter taste of bile.  She wiped her mouth and rolled back away from the mess, feeling dizzy. 

She should clean up after herself, she thought vaguely.  She was tired of people having to take care of her, and this was just another way she had fucked things up.  Commander Shepard couldn’t even sleep through the night without making another mess.  Hatred rose within her.   

She had been too weak.  That was what she was hiding from.  If she had been a stronger woman, a braver woman, she could have saved everything.  The Illusive Man had been wrong about so many things, but if the Reapers and their might and their knowledge could have been truly harnessed….  All of it hinged on a choice.  She had only needed to walk left instead of right, to let herself fall away into a new existence.  Wasn’t that the point of her entire career?  If one soldier, dying, could save the lives of trillions, wasn’t it worth it? 

But she had been  _afraid_.  Not to die.  She had done that once before, after all.  That was not what kept her back. 

She was afraid to  _live_. 

She had been afraid of an existence where she would live forever, and shed her organic body.  She had been afraid to continue forward to where her friends, and family, and world, would inevitably die and decay.  She had been afraid to become something different, afraid to be tasked with such a great responsibility.  The past few years of choice after choice after agonizing choice would continue for eternity, and she would have no one else to help her.  She would exist beyond them.  She would not even miss them.  She would be alone with herself, forever.  And the idea terrified her more than anything she had ever encountered.

Which left one other choice.  Genocide and destruction, because she was afraid of the alternative. 

One soldier, snuffing out billions.

She panted with the anger, the guilt, the hatred.  These feelings, suffocating, intrusive, would not let her rest.  The only times she did not feel them was when she felt nothing at all, just a gray dull emptiness.  She could not remember happiness, joy, hope.  If the crushing numbness was the best she could muster, what was the point? To go on, remembering the faces of the dead day after day?  Reliving the choices she’d made?  Being afraid to fall asleep, every night, for the rest of her life?  That wasn’t life.  That wasn’t living.

“I’m so tired,” she admitted to herself.  “I just want this to stop.”  The sound of her own voice, broken and small in the empty room, made her feel more alone than ever.  She had been afraid to live that day on the Citadel.  The feeling swelled inside her, a terror making her heart stutter and pound. 

No one was going to give her access to the weapons lockers right now, she knew that.  But there could be another way.  She remembered the medications Dr. Chakwas had been giving her.  She was on heavy painkillers, she knew that.  She remembered after Akuze, when she had been on similar medications.  They had warned her about the risk of addiction, the risk of… overdose.  Humans didn’t process these medications well in large doses.  Their brains stopped telling their lungs how to breathe.   Even with intervention, those cases still often died. 

Weakly, Shepard tried to find a reason why she should not consider giving up.  Her mother would be sad… but her mother had survived her first death.  They were not close, but rather, loved each other from afar.  Her mother would understand.  How many soldiers sought a way out at the end of their service weapons?  She was hardly the first.

Her chest ached until she found it hard to breathe, thinking of Garrus.  The two of them against the world.  No Shepard without Vakarian.  He would miss her desperately, and she would miss him.  She felt as if she’d been stealing her time with him the last few days, that she had not deserved to get to see him again.  She knew how grateful he was to have her back, but he didn’t know what she had become.  She did not want him to find out.

But maybe in time he would come to remember the woman she used to be.  He could erase the painful memory of these botched few days.  Now she could set it to right.  Garrus could be free to remember her like a hero instead of the coward she knew she was inside, and he could hang her name on the memorial wall with pride.  She knew he was strong enough to take it.  And maybe, maybe, they could still meet at the bar one day.

Shepard nodded, a hollow peace stealing over her.  This would be better.    

She regretted the work that Dr. Chakwas had been doing, trying to get her back into working condition.  It seemed a pointless waste of her valuable skills.  She could be helping wounded civilians over on one of the refugee ships.  Instead she was tending a person who had rotted away inside, who would never come back.  Shepard had meant to die on the Citadel with her choice.  She was simply correcting her last mistake.  

She crawled to the drawers beside her bed, reaching out and touching them with a trembling hand.  She pulled  at the handle experimentally, but a red lock popped into view.  It seemed Dr. Chakwas kept the medications locked behind it, presumably to prevent something like this from happening.

Shepard looked at the red lock for a moment, shining in the darkness, round and symmetric.  It was telling her it was okay to stop what she was doing.  She could stop now, and never speak of this moment to anyone.  She could come back.

She flicked on her omni-tool and set it to bypass.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I feel sad just posting this :( 
> 
> I hate when fics toss in the idea of suicide just for melodrama, but I think it’s an understandable conclusion of a person who has been through so much and has had only the idea that she was always trying her best to help bolster her through it. When that belief is shattered, it seems wholly reasonable to me that suicide would be considered. My own father has attempted suicide 10-15 times (I am not sure, I was very young during some of these attempts) and so I hope that I am being respectful of this subject.


	12. Found Out

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "I didn't know it was this bad."

Garrus paced back and forth in the main battery, counting the steps.  He could not sleep tonight.  Instead he walked forwards and backwards, tracing the same path.  It had been a difficult day.  

His thoughts buzzed in his head, clamoring to be addressed.  He did not know what could be done about them.  Shepard had started to tell him what had happened to her the day the war ended, but had found the memories too painful.  It disturbed him to know that there were things she did not feel she could tell him.  He wished he knew why.

A faint noise caught his attention.  It sounded like a shout or cry, followed by a thump.  He stared in its direction.  Probably someone had tripped out in the kitchen.  He sighed.  He had better go see if they needed a hand.  Humans seemed to stumble with surprising regularity.  He chuckled a little, despite himself.  He had seen Traynor trip coming out of the elevator at least three times over the past few months.  She was a nice woman, but not exactly graceful. 

He exited the main battery and glanced around the kitchen and table area.  There was no one around, and the dishes were cleaned and put away.  There was nothing on the floor to show that anyone had dropped something.  He headed over to the doorway to Liara’s office, but the red lock was up on the door, indicating she did not want to be disturbed.  It had not sounded like Liara, anyway.  

Garrus loped over to the medical bay.  The windows were dimmed.  He knew Dr. Chakwas had given Shepard a mild sedative tonight, to try and help her sleep.  He hoped that she was finding some rest; he feared he had worn her out too much with their discussion today.   

He walked past the med-bay, craning his head down the hallway.   He checked both the port and starboard lounges, and found no one.  The crew all seemed to be abed in their quarters, and if there had been any commotion in there, they all would have been awake.  He peered into the men’s restroom, and heard nothing outside the women’s facilities. 

Garrus frowned, coming back around to the med-bay.  He felt anxious in a way that had little to do with anything tangible.  Perhaps he would just check in on Shepard, and make sure that she was sleeping soundly.

The doors slid open, and he knew immediately that something was wrong.  There was an unpleasant odor in the air, and a diffuse orange glow in the back of the room that looked like it was coming from an omni-tool.  “Shepard, you all right?” he said into the murky dark of the room.

He could hear her breathing, and it sounded ragged.  His keen vision glimpsed a movement in the corner of the room, near the floor.  The orange glow flicked out.  

“Hey, it’s just me.  I’m going to turn on the light,” he said.  His sense of anxiety increased.  He could feel his pulse quickening, his breath coming more quickly.  Something was wrong.  He turned on the lights.

She wasn’t on her bed in the corner.  Its blankets were piled haphazardly around the end of the bed, and he could just see the top of her head from where he was standing.  She was on the ground.  Had she fallen?  He rushed to her, stopping a few feet away, and stared.

“Garrus, get out of here,” Shepard said, but the words were mumbled and pleading.  She was not looking up at him, focused on twisting something in her hands.  She was sitting against the edge of her bed, legs half-tucked beneath her, her patient’s gown hanging off her shoulder.  He could see even from several feet away that she was shuddering.  There was vomit on the ground behind her, and next to her, several bottles on their side. 

“What’s going on?” he said sharply, kneeling next to her.  He picked up one of the bottles.  Medicine?  “Are you all  —”  He reached out to touch her hand and she flinched, jerking away from him.  He looked down at the thing she held in her hands, and saw it was imprinted with text.  He caught a few words.   _Fentanyl.  Analgesia in humans.  Risk of respiratory depression.  In case of overdose…_

Garrus could not breathe.  Chills swept over him, and his mind was a blank horror.  She was trying to kill herself.

Shepard must have seen his dawning comprehension.  Her face blanched white.  Her fingers uncurled until the bottle fell out of them, hitting the floor with a clink that echoed in the room. “I’m so ashamed,” she whispered.

“Did you take any of this?” he croaked, scrabbling to pull it out of her reach.  It felt full.  “Are you going to…”  He couldn’t finish the sentence.  The enormity of what had almost happened crushed him.  He threw the bottle across the room, not caring what it hit.  

“I was going to,” Shepard said.  “But I hadn’t — I didn’t take any.”  She looked horrified, her mouth drawn back in a grimace, her eyes wide, her hair tangled around her face.  She seemed frozen.   He wrapped his arms around her, pulling her as close as he could.  Her face was inches from his, but she avoided looking into his eyes.

“Shepard, we have to talk about this,” he said.  He was shaking all over, panting.  He had never felt so panicked, so helpless.  This was worse than when he had thought she was dead.  Before he could stop himself he said, “How could you even  _think_ that this would be the answer?”

The words hung in the air between them, and he could see by the wounded look in her eyes that it was the wrong thing to say.  “I’m sorry,” he said, bowing his head.  “That was… that doesn’t help you.”  Guilt overwhelmed him.  How could it have come to this?  Where had he been?  

“Shepard, I didn’t know it was this bad.”  His voice cracked on the last word.  He stroked her hair, smoothing its tangles beneath his talons.  He could not think of anything else to do.

Her mouth trembled, and there was a sudden sheen to her eyes.  She tried to speak but a rough sound left her mouth instead.  It was like nothing he had ever heard before, a keening wail of grief that cut him to the core, and then she was sobbing.  

He had seen humans cry before, and knew it was something they did with sadness.  But this was more than the tears he had seen on faces at C-Sec, or what they showed in the vids.  She crumpled against him, crying so hard that she sounded as if she were choking.  Her face was blotched red and white, and tears and mucus streaked her cheeks and the skin beneath her nose.  He had never seen her like this.  After so many deaths, so much tragedy, so much fear and uncertainty… she had finally broken down.

“I love you,” he breathed into her ear.   Shepard laid her head against his chest, her cries wordless but filled with a pain he could understand better than speech.  He slipped his hand beneath the neck of her gown to rub her back, and subconsciously began to rock her, gently, back and forth.  “I love you.  I love you.  I love you.”  It was a plea.  A prayer.  A promise.  

Her hands reached up to touch his face, and he sighed to feel the softness of her skin.  She looked up at him, her breathing slowing, the sound fading.  Her body was no longer spasming with sobs, though tears continued to pool at the edges of her eyes. 

She gave him a watery smile.  “I haven’t cried in years, I think,” she admitted, wiping at her eyes.  They had become so swollen so quickly to the point that it seemed difficult to open them.  “I didn’t want you to see any of this.” 

“Please don’t ever hurt yourself, Shepard,” he whispered.  “I couldn’t live if you’d hurt yourself.  I’ve already lost you twice.  I can’t do it again.”

“I’m so sorry, Garrus,” she said, pulling him down to kiss her.  Her mouth was so warm and familiar against his, and he thanked whatever spirits made up the Normandy that she was still here, still in his arms.  “I just wanted it to be over.  I couldn’t bear to keep facing what I’ve done.  You don’t understand what happened up there.”

“You have to let it out.  You’ve been running on fumes for months, Shepard, don’t try to tell me otherwise.”  He rested his forehead against hers, exhaling heavily.  “You’re one hell of a woman.  The strongest woman I’ve ever met, human, turian,  _krogan_ ….”  The corners of her mouth twitched in half of a weak smile.   

“The point is, Shepard, that even the strongest person can’t do things alone, not all the time.  You asked for my help against Saren.  You asked for it against the Collectors.  You asked me to join you against the Reapers.”  He kissed her cheek, her forehead, her other cheek.  “Let me help you now, for old times’ sake.”  He embraced her, and she hugged him back as tightly as she could. 

“I want to talk to you,” she said, “about why I—”  She couldn’t say the words.  She leaned against him, and took a deep breath.  “Can we go up to my room?”  She paused, as if trying to figure out what might convince him.  He knew it was because she did not want to stay down here anymore.  “I miss my fish.”  She tried to laugh, the sound thick with mucus.

Despite himself he laughed a little too, grateful to seize on a topic so trivial.  “Thank goodness that the VI you bought to take care of them is right on target.  I’ve checked in on them a few times.  They’re all up there, swimming away.  Even that creepy tentacled one.”

“Javik the Second?” Shepard asked.   

Garrus looked at her.  “Is that seriously what you named it?”

“Maybe.”  She laughed again, but the movement of her face shifted suddenly into holding back tears again.  “I’m a mess,” she said softly. 

“That’s okay.”  He helped her up to her feet, and she leaned against the bed, bearing little weight on her bad leg.  He looked around for the cane and handed it to her, and she nodded.   

“Let me just clean this up,” he said.  He quickly collected the bottles of medicine that lay on the floor, and it only took him a moment to find the one he had flung into the wall.  Hastily he stacked them back in the open cabinet by Shepard’s bed.  He found a cleaning solution on the bottom shelf, and cleaned the floor.   

“I woke up sick,” said Shepard, rubbing her face.  “I think it was the nightmare I had.”

Garrus pulled the blanket off the bed, and draped it over her shoulders.  It looked like a cape.  She cut an absurd figure in the blanket-cloak, with her cane peeking out from the edge of the blanket and her hospital gown brushing her kneecaps.  Her feet were bare.   

Garrus didn’t know what to do with everything that had happened today.  He was exhausted.  He was heartsick.  He was furious, confused, aching.   

What did this mean for them?  He had thought, when he first saw her laying in a hospital bed on the Willamette, that they could come back from this.  But he had underestimated the weight of everything that lay on her shoulders.  Garrus had hoped that with the war over, they could begin to rebuild, to find out who they were when their lives weren’t focused on death and fighting.  But it seemed that there were some wounds too deep to heal in the woman standing in front of him.  If only they could fall asleep and wake up in the morning to find it had all been an unpleasant dream.

Sleep sounded tempting right now.  He was so tired, as if he had been fighting in a pitched battle for hours.  But he reached out a hand to Shepard to stroke her cheek.  She needed him to stay awake and keep her safe from whatever nightmares lurked inside her.  Sleep could wait.

“Come on,” he said.  “Get your shoes on, and we’ll go check on the fish.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Auuuuugh babies :( :( :(


	13. In the Quiet Midnight Hour

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shepard and Garrus and a much-needed talk.

Shepard stood in the doorway of her quarters, leaning on her cane, Garrus beside her.  The room, so familiar, seemed utterly alien to her.  It belonged to a different person than the one she was now, even though the room was marked all over with her presence.  Her ship models were both instantly recognizable and totally strange.  Her computer terminal still had messages up on the screen, as if she had only stepped outside for a moment instead of what felt like a lifetime.  She had left her Alliance dress uniform in a heap on the floor with her underclothes.  The folds of blue and gold and black seemed bizarre.

She stepped forward, the blanket she was wearing around her shoulders dragging on the floor.  She made her way to the sofa and painstakingly lowered herself down to sit on its edge.  The blue light of the fish tank played soothingly before her.  Garrus settled in beside her. 

“Good to be home?” he asked. 

“It’s strange,” she said.  She shrugged, fighting back nausea.  She still wasn’t sure if she was glad, or angry, that Garrus had found her on the ground with a bottle of fentanyl.  She had sat with it clenched in her hands, held its weight, considered it gravely from the curve of its lid to the warning text on the side.  It would have taken only a simple twist of the lid to open it, and then she would only have had to start swallowing.  But she hadn’t been able to make herself do it, and that was when Garrus had found her.  It seemed like a far distant memory, even though it was only half an hour ago.

Her head throbbed.  She had not cried in a long, long time, and especially had not sobbed in a very long time.  To so in front of another person was humiliating, but she took a small measure of comfort in the fact that it was Garrus.  If anyone had to see her like that, she supposed it should be him.  Better he know exactly what he was getting into.

“I had a dream,” she said, fixing her gaze on the fish tank.  The fish swam lazily back and forth in the blue expanse of water, fins and tendrils and tentacles wavering.  She wasn’t kidding.  The creepy tentacled one really was named Javik the Second, as the first tentacled Javik had managed to get itself eaten by the blue Liara fish.  She knew it was ridiculous but she had named a sea creature after each of her crew.  The plated, jewelled Garrus crab scooted along the bottom of the tank on its ten legs, waving its claws. 

Shepard sighed.  She knew she couldn’t just sit here and think about the fish.  The more she tried to ignore what she felt, the worse it seemed to get.  She dimly remembered that happening after Akuze, which felt like centuries before.  She spoke.  “Ashley, Mordin, Thane, they were all there.  Legion and… EDI, too.  It started out like a party.  It was good to see them all again.”  Her fists curled in her lap.  “But it turned into a nightmare.  Ash and Thane and Mordin were dead.  Legion and EDI were dying, but I was the one who put the bullets in their heads.  I told them — I told them they had no future.”  She swallowed, staring hard at the fish tank.  “Legion told me once that the geth built their own future.  That was why so many of them opposed the Reapers.  They wanted to make themselves.  And in the dream, I destroyed that.”

Garrus reached out and laid a hand on her shoulder.  Its familiar weight brought little comfort.  She wished he didn’t look so tired.

“And then I —”  She stumbled, hesitated.  Was it worth it, to tell him this?  Before she could decide against it she said, “Then you were there.  You told me, after I had just murdered EDI and Legion, that I was a good person.  I told you not to lie.”  Her breath came quicker, but she spoke through it.  “You kissed me, and your face was covered with blood.  My blood.  And I — killed you.”  The words felt filthy in her mouth. 

“It was just a dream,” said Garrus, squeezing her shoulder.  “You don’t have to feel responsible for what happened in a dream.  Everyone has nightmares.” 

“But are their nightmares true?” she said, her voice harsh.  She pulled away from his hand, sinking into the blanket that surrounded her.  “I had three choices, Garrus.  Synthesis.  You know I didn’t choose that.”  She kept looking away from him, unable to face him.

“And?”

“I could control them.  The AI told me that I could take over its task, and become the master intelligence in charge of the Reapers.  It would be what the Illusive Man wanted but could never do, because he became indoctrinated himself.”

“But what guarantee could it offer that you wouldn’t become indoctrinated?” asked Garrus.

“It said I would still remain myself… mostly.  I would have to leave my body behind, and it could upload my consciousness into their network.  Then I could use the Reapers to rebuild Earth, Thessia, Palaven.  We could learn from all the races who died before.  It could be a golden age for the entire galaxy.”  She spoke stiffly, coldly.  It was the only way to distance herself from the memory.

“You would die?” he said, his voice rough with emotion.

“No,” she said.  “I would live like that… forever, maybe.  That AI was millions of years old.  That’s what I would become.”  She shrugged again.  “I’d see you, and Liara, and Tali, and the rest of the crew, grow old and die.  It would be millennia of service and massive decisions that affected the galaxy.”

He was silent for a moment.  “That’s a hell of a choice.  But you’re still here.”

“The last choice was the simple one,” she said.  The fish swum merrily through their tank, light refracting through the bubbles floating up from the bottom.  The Kaidan flounder buried itself in the sand after the Grunt eel slithered too close to it.  She swallowed.  “Destroy them all.”  She finally forced herself to look at him.

Shepard felt a fresh stab of guilt.  It had taken her months to learn how to read turian faces, or at least, one turian’s face.  The subtle shift of a mandible, the tilt of the head, the slight movement of the fringe, half lidding of the eyes.  They all meant something.  Garrus’ face now showed a painful mixture of expressions; the worried half-tilt of his head, the devastated look in those blue eyes, which were dimmed with exhaustion.  She’d done this, too.

“It told me that I could use the Crucible to destroy the Reapers.  But the signal wouldn’t discriminate.”  She hung her head.  “I knew EDI and all of the geth would die, and I chose it anyway.”

“Shepard, listen to me,” said Garrus, rubbing his face with one three-fingered hand.  Another sign of turian exhaustion.  “Since when have Reapers ever told us the truth?  They’d say anything to try and indoctrinate you.  Just because it told you that you would be in control, you’d have only its word to go on.  It just doesn’t make sense to trust it.”

“I thought of that,” Shepard said.  The Tali’Zorah nar Aquarium hermit crab climbed over the jeweled Garrus crab and spat bubbles at it.  Shepard rubbed her hands together, her fingers twisting in knots.  “But for what it’s worth, I believed what it said then.  I believed I could save everyone, without irrevocably altering everyone with the synthesis.”  She couldn’t bear the way he was looking at her.  “I’ve spent so much of my life convinced I would die soon.  It’s the life of a soldier, right?”

“Right,” he said, laying his hands on top of hers, as if to stop her twisting.  Slowly she allowed her hands to still.  “We all face that risk.”

“I’ve spent so long expecting it.  And it even happened!”  She laughed, but it veered dangerously close to a sob, and she stifled the noise.  She would not let herself do that again.  “I should have died back on Akuze.  I should have stayed dead on the SR-1.  I should have died when Earth was hit.  And somewhere in there, I think I started to wish the uncertainty would be over.”  She smiled, the expression uncomfortably tight, pulling her cheeks in an unnatural way.  “And when that  _thing_  asked me to live forever — in a world of unending uncertainty, without the only people who’ve kept me going — I said no.”

Garrus had nothing to say.  She lost the thread of what his face meant, and suddenly he was inscrutable, unknown.  He squeezed her hands in his, gripping them tight, but he looked to her a stranger. 

“I was supposed to die in the Crucible,” she whispered.  “Before I ever had to live with my choices, before I had to live with… genocide.”  She tasted ashes.  “Tonight?  Tonight I just felt… tired, Garrus.  I didn’t want to know myself anymore.  I didn’t want you to be stuck with someone this broken.  That’s what happened.”

She was too tired to feel nervousness as she waited for his response.  He looked steadily at her, as if he was seeing her for the first time.  His hands released hers, and for a moment she felt a dull fear that he would get up, walk out, and leave her to herself and her failures.

“Come here,” he said softly.  He held out one arm to her, and slowly, clumsily, she moved forward until his arm was draped over her back.  His other arm slid down beneath her knees where she sat on the edge of the sofa, and before she could ask what he was doing he had lifted her, blanket and all, cradling her body against his.  She opened her mouth to protest, but closed it again, resting her head against his chest.

He took short, careful steps to the bed, making sure not to jostle her.  He gently laid her down in the middle of the bed, then pulled off his shirt, revealing his naked chest and arms.  He slid onto the bed behind her, curling up against her and slipping one arm over her.  His other arm found a place beneath her neck and shoulders, and he pulled her close.

She closed her eyes, exhaling to feel the places where their skin touched.  For a moment she could pretend it was an earlier time, when things were still so fresh and new with each other, when they had returned triumphant from the Omega 4 relay.  Life had seemed… if not simple, then at least it had seemed _worth_  it.

“I’m sorry,” said Garrus quietly.  “I just needed to hold you.”

“Do you remember that first night you came up here?” Shepard asked.  “You were… bashful.  It was sweet.” 

“I’m still bashful around you, Shepard.”  He leaned his head against hers, and she felt safe, close, protected for a moment before clamoring thoughts struck her again.  Garrus paused, perhaps searching for words, and Shepard tried to let herself relax.

“You had a terrible choice,” he said.  “None of those decisions should have been given to one person.  Not one.  That AI sounds like an asshole, to be honest.” 

“I can second that.” 

“But you still saved millions of lives.  We talked about this, remember?  Ruthless calculus.  The choices of war can’t be judged the way normal choices can.  I know how important EDI was to you.  And Legion.  And peace between the geth and the quarians.” 

Shepard’s eyes stung, and she closed them tightly, willing herself to stop any tears from forming.  It wasn’t working.

“I don’t think you could have trusted that you wouldn’t be indoctrinated, the other way.  And even if you weren’t… to ask one person to become  _immortal_  to control those monsters, it doesn’t make sense.  You made the best choice you could, with the information that you had, with who you are.  You ended the Reapers.  Forever, Shepard.” 

His arm around her squeezed, gently, and she realized how much she had missed the warmth of his thick skin.  She used to be a cold sleeper, with feet like ice blocks.  Garrus kept her warm, though.

“You’re right to grieve for EDI.  And the geth… it took me a long time, but you’re right.  They were alive.  And they’re not, now, and it  _is_  because of something that you chose.  But remember how many lives you saved, Shepard, how many people you’ve touched, how many worlds are better because you’ve been there.   _I’m_  better because of you.”  He let out a long sigh, the sound cracking in the middle.  “You had to do terrible things to win this war, but you did win it.  And I forgive you.”

He kissed her neck, just below the curve of her ear.  She hoped he had not noticed the new tears leaking from the corners of her eyes.   

“I couldn’t live with myself if you chose to end things.  We’re going to get you through this.  In the morning we’ll talk with Dr. Chakwas and we’ll figure something out.  It won’t be easy.”  He was silent for a moment.  “You do want to get through it, don’t you?”

Shepard thought about the question, really thought about it.  Sitting in the dark with only the glow of her omni-tool to show she had the right bottle, she had been able to think of nothing else but not having to feel anymore.  It had seemed so necessary, like euthanizing an animal in pain, or shooting a fatally wounded soldier out of mercy.  But here with Garrus, in her familiar bed, the plan seemed flawed.  If she died now, she would never feel him pressed against her again.  No one would be here to give the fish stupid names.  She wouldn’t be able to see what Garrus looked like teaching a little turian or human how to walk.

“I’m scared,” she said honestly.  “But I want to try.” 

“That’s my girl,” he said in relief.  “Try to get some rest.  I’ll be right here.” 

She shivered in his arms, but the warmth of his embrace took the edge off the cold.  With Garrus there, she thought she might be able to live up to what she had said, about trying.  

She’d always fought hard, throughout her whole life.  Maybe she could fight a little more.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ungh their sorrow is infinite ;_;
> 
> also I'm sorry but I'm not sorry about the fish names XD


	14. Starting Fresh

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Garrus worries, in the night.

Garrus lay awake, watching the fish swim to and fro in their tank.  It was almost morning, and he had remained awake the entire night, making sure that Shepard had no opportunity to be alone. 

She had rolled over onto her belly a few minutes ago, the blankets wrinkling around her face.  Her eyes still looked puffy and swollen after the crying she had done earlier.  Garrus took the opportunity with his arms free to open up his omni-tool. 

He hesitated, pulling up the message screen holo.  He knew he had to send an alert to Dr. Chakwas about whatever needed to be done next.  His mind swam with it.  Hackett would have to be informed, he was sure.  Technically no one was in command of the ship right now — order had taken a backseat with everything happening — but he guessed that the admiral would want to officially promote Kaidan or James given Shepard’s mental state.  He wasn’t sure how it worked in the human military, but turian attempted suicide during active service typically meant forced hospitalization, and often an honorable discharge from military service.

He didn’t know what to put in his message to the doctor.   _Hi, my girlfriend tried to kill herself, and oh yeah, she’s still technically the commander of this ship._  He felt disgusted with himself for having such a flippant thought.  He would ask himself what was wrong with him, but he knew he had plenty of reason to feel terrible right now.  He chalked it up to one of those stupid things that brains did when they were stressed. 

He kept feeling cold and nauseous randomly, every time his mind seized on that image of Shepard, small and sitting on the floor with enough opioids to kill a krogan.  If he had not decided to take a chance of disturbing her sleep, or if he had checked on her only a few hours later, or if he had not heard that distant sound in the med-bay…. She could even now be laying on the floor next to her bed, alone, her breathing slowing, slowing, stopping.   

He reached out compulsively to touch her back.  She was still here.  Still breathing. 

In the end he settled for simply sending a small message to Dr. Chakwas, marked as high alert.   _Shepard and I are in her quarters.  Very bad night.  Please come up when you get this. - Garrus_

He shut the omni-tool down and settled back against the pillows, his hands resting at his sides.  He stared up at the skylight and its field of stars and Alliance ships.  He didn’t know what to do.  

Garrus had thought he knew Shepard.  He still thought that he was probably the person who knew her best, but he was stunned to realize how deeply her pain cut.  She was so damn  _good_ at seeming like she had things under control, like she was able to cope with it at all.  He hadn’t known her well enough at first to see the signs of strain, but since the SR-2 he had started to figure out, here and there, where the cracks were showing.  He was able to see in the set of her shoulders, or the way she picked at her breakfast, that the stress was there, but even so she still hid the depth of it remarkably well. 

If only she had been a little less strong, or he had been a little better at understanding humans.  Maybe then he would have seen this coming.

There was that cold, nauseated feeling again.  Why hadn’t he insisted on staying with her from the beginning?  Dr. Chakwas hadn’t thought it was necessary.  For a moment he wanted to blame her, stick her with the guilt that was eating at him.  But she was far less close to Shepard than he was.  He should’ve at least been suspicious that something like this might happen, given the massive trauma she had survived.

Garrus tried to think of something else.  Anything.  He tried naming some of the stars in the window above him.  They had some star called Polaris in this system, didn’t they?  He attempted to name the constellations.  Big Dipper.  Small Dipper?  Human Hunter.  No, that didn’t seem right.  He shook his head, and tried imagining some of his favorite weapons.  It didn’t work as a distraction.  It only made him want to go out and kill something.  Maybe he could spar with some of the crew later.  Take his mind off things.

He drifted in and out of thoughts over the next hour or two, sometimes blankly looking at the things in Shepard’s room, sometimes letting himself think for a few moments at a time.  Shepard slept beside him, but not too soundly; if he shifted from side to side, she breathed more heavily for a moment in response.  

A knock came at the door, the sound of human knuckles against the metal.  Garrus sighed and stroked Shepard’s hair lightly, then rolled to the side of the bed and got to his feet.  He pulled his shirt back on, aware that it must be looking fairly lived-in by this point.  He would have to launder it today.  He would have been wearing his armor, but it had been heavily damaged in the beam run, and the other suit he had on board had never fitted quite right.  He twitched the sleeves down over his hands and shuffled to the door, keying the entry code.  The door opened.

“Garrus?” said Dr. Chakwas.  Her hair was not in its usual neat style, and her clothing did not look as pressed as it usually did.  “I came as quickly as I could.  What happened?”  She peered around him, trying to catch a glimpse of Shepard.  “Do you want to talk in the hall?”

“No,” said Garrus.  “Come in.  I don’t think we should leave her alone anymore.” 

Dr. Chakwas stared at him, her eyes wide, as she slipped into the room and the door closed behind her.  They stepped into the office area of the room, where Garrus could still keep an eye on Shepard through the rows of spaceship models.  “Garrus, what happened?” she asked in a low voice.

Garrus couldn’t look directly at her.  He focused on staring past her, into the sleeping quarters.  “I heard a noise in the night.  When I went in to check on her she was sitting on the ground, about to overdose on her medication.”

Dr. Chakwas closed her eyes, a muscle in her cheek twitching.  She took a step backwards.  “Oh my god.  I should’ve —”

Garrus shrugged.  It didn’t really matter.  “I stopped her.  She didn’t take any of it.” 

She opened her eyes, sighing.  “Whenever a soldier is flagged at high risk for post-traumatic stress, we disable their omni-blades… Shepard’s has been shut off since they began treating her on the Willamette.  I thought that would be sufficient; I didn’t see any signs of suicidal ideation in my evaluation of her.  Depression, certainly, but I didn’t think she was suicidal.”

“I’m not sure she was until last night,” said Garrus, sick at the fact that this conversation was even occurring.  “I guessed she’d been pretty depressed, but she had a nightmare that made things worse, and she got… impulsive.”

Dr. Chakwas nodded.  “That’s very common.”  She looked around, hesitating.  “I’ll have to inform the Alliance, of course.  Standard procedure.  Depending on my assessment of her today, they may want her transferred back to the Willamette for suicide watch and inpatient therapy.”

“Do you think that would be best for her?”

She folded her arms.  “Shepard’s support network is right here in this ship.  I think if Shepard wanted to stay I could convince them to keep her here, but it’s up to her.  It’s also possible this was a one-time incident, and she may not attempt it again.”   

“I wish I could trust that,” said Garrus.  He wavered on his feet, shaking his head to stay awake.

“Garrus, you’re exhausted,” Dr. Chakwas said.  “You stayed up all night?”

“And most of the night before, now that I think of it,” he admitted.  “Not one of my better ideas.”

“You’d better go rest before I have to admit you to the medical bay as well,” said Dr. Chakwas sternly.  “I can speak to Shepard here if you want to go get some sleep.”

He wanted to take her up on the offer, but he couldn’t leave without saying goodbye to Shepard first.  He stumbled into the living area, making his way to the bed, and sat next to Shepard.  Sleepily, she rolled over to greet him. 

“Garrus?  Morning,” she said groggily, one hand coming up to rub her eyes.   

“Hey, Shepard,” he said.  “Dr. Chakwas is here.” 

The sleep cleared away from Shepard’s face, replaced by a dawning look of wariness.  “Goddammit,” she said, apparently just now remembering the events of the night. 

“I know.  She’s going to patch you up.  You just focus on kicking ass now, all right?” said Garrus, leaning down and kissing her on the cheek.  

“I’ll do what I can,” Shepard said, “though I think my ass-kicker is broken.”   

“Maybe I can calibrate it,” said Garrus, and grunted when Shepard hurled her pillow in his face.  He smiled down at her.  “Or not." 

She sat up, yawning loudly, and glanced over to where Dr. Chakwas stood.  Shepard looked nervous, but also resolved.  The sight heartened him.  

“Morning, Karin,” she said cautiously. 

“Good morning, Commander.”  Dr. Chakwas nodded at him, and Garrus gave Shepard another look before she smiled at him.  It was a small, tight smile but a smile regardless. 

“Good luck, Shepard,” said Garrus.  “You know where I’ll be if you need anything.”  Shepard’s smile lingered for just a moment longer, and before it began to crumple Garrus turned and walked past the doctor, out into the hallway.

Time to rest, before he passed out on his feet.  He only wished that when he woke up, he would actually feel better.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> haha, I'm sorry for my foolish attempts at humor in these rather dark chapters :)


	15. Revelations

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The team learns new information.

“Dr. T’soni,” Glyph burbled cheerfully.  “There is a new message at your private terminal.  It concerns Commander Shepard.”

Liara rolled over in bed, blinking rapidly.  She had been up late trying to coordinate the remnants of her information network.  It was a task that was clearly going to take years; the network had been heavily damaged, between informants’ lives lost and the degradation of infrastructure and satellites.  It gave her a headache just thinking about it.  “It concerns her?  Do you mean that it’s from her?”

“No,” said Glyph.  “It is from Dr. Chakwas.  Would you like me to dictate it to you?”

“No, Glyph, I’ve spent too long laying in bed this morning.  I’ll get it.”  Liara sat up, swinging her legs over the side of the bed.  The room air was chilly on her bare skin, and she pulled on her jacket before crossing over to her terminal.

The message was written in a clipped, brief style, sent from Dr. Chakwas’ Alliance account.  Liara scanned it with a sense of growing dread, picking up sentences here and there, but one caught her attention painfully.   _Last night, the Commander exhibited suicidal tendencies._

Liara collapsed into her office chair.  Shepard?  Shepard would do that?

For a moment the screen in front of her became blurred, as tears burned her eyes.  “Oh, Shepard,” she sighed, smoothing one hand over her scalp before rubbing the back of her neck.  She blinked the tears away and scrolled back up to see to whom the message had been addressed.  She noted every member of the squad, in addition to Cortez and Traynor.  Lower level crewmates had not been informed.   

Liara considered.  She knew that the Alliance had begun using Shepard as a figurehead in the last few months of the war, despite their pillorying of her character before the attack on Earth.  If the Alliance at large was aware that Shepard, their hero, their salvation, was now suicidal, it would be a staggering blow.  Not as devastating as it would have been before the Reapers were destroyed, but it would still cut short the celebrations and the cheers that Liara’s network was streaming in on a daily basis.  It would not be only humans who would suffer to hear of Shepard’s fallibility.

Liara had watched a few of the vids, as static-filled and garbled as they were.  She had seen the relief in the faces of humans, the cheers of her fellow asari, the solemn salutes from turians and salarians.  The krogan revered Shepard as a battlemaster and the elcor and volus sang her praises.  All of them would suffer if they learned how fragile Shepard really was.  

Liara returned to the message.  Yes, there was a section about confidentiality.  Dr. Chakwas stated that Shepard had agreed to let those she most trusted learn what had happened.  Admiral Hackett had been informed and had allowed Shepard to remain on the ship on medical leave, but Dr. Chakwas and the crew would be responsible for monitoring Shepard for further suicidal thoughts.  They were not to discuss the reason for the monitoring with any crew who were not included in the message.  

_So_ _,_  she thought,  _Hackett thinks he can keep it quiet if she stays here._   It was not a bad idea.  After all, the majority of the universe had been unaware of EDI’s existence, despite her presence on one of the most famous ships in the galaxy.  If there was one thing the Normandy’s crew could handle, it was stealth.  She read further.  Kaidan would officially rank as Commander for the time being until Shepard was deemed fit for duty.

Her heart sank to think about Shepard in the medical bay, trapped by her own demons.  Shepard had played such a huge role in Liara’s life.  Her first love.  Her captain and commander.  Her dear friend.  To think of Shepard trying to end her own life made her feel like grieving all over again.  What had driven her to it?  Obviously the stress of the war had been immense, but it was over now… couldn’t she move past it?

She glanced at the console again, and realized there was an attachment with a note from Dr. Chakwas.   _Enclosed is the statement Commander Shepard gave regarding the events of the Crucible.  She asked me to send this to you all in order to give you some understanding of what occurred._  

Liara opened the attachment with trepidation.  She had been wanting to know what had happened to Shepard up there, but she had not realized that the Crucible could be used for different purposes.  She read the document, and when she was finished, she lay back down on her bed with her head spinning. 

She could not imagine being asked to make choices of such magnitude, even though as the Shadow Broker there were many things she had control over.  But never had she needed to decide something so monumental, so far-reaching.

Liara pressed the heels of her hands against her closed eyelids, grimacing.   _To the victor go the spoils_ , she thought, and the humming of her monitors brought no comfort.

*** 

Shepard shifted uncomfortably, sitting on the edge of the bed in her quarters.  She had not wanted to stay in the medical bay longer than necessary after her evaluation by Dr. Chakwas this morning.  Karin had been understanding, kind, professional — but Shepard still felt humiliated at her moment of weakness.  She felt more comfortable up here, physically far away from the scene of the crime, as she was beginning to think of it.  Dr. Chakwas was at the computer terminal, trying to arrange for an Alliance counselor to work with Shepard over the comm link.  She was seemingly engrossed in her typing, but taking a break every few moments to look up at Shepard over the edge of the monitor.  The feeling of being watched was frustrating, but she understood it.

Shepard pulled at her collar.  Her Alliance uniform seemed ill-fitting now.  It hung awkwardly across her shoulders, and there seemed to be too much room in the trousers, a side effect of the way her muscles had begun to atrophy after the nerve damage to her leg.  She sat there with her hands folded in her lap, waiting.

The door opened, and Joker walked in, moving carefully.  “Hey, doc,” he said with mild surprise to Dr. Chakwas.  

“I’ll leave you and Shepard to talk,” she said.  “Just give me a ring when you’ve finished.”  She headed out, leaving Joker to come closer and settle in on the couch. 

“You wanted to see me, Shepard?” he asked.  Up close, she could see the way his cheeks looked gaunt, and the dull look in his eyes.  His hat cast a shadow over his face.  “How are you feeling?”

“Like shit,” Shepard said honestly.  “You?”

“Surprisingly, the same,” he said.  “What’s up?” 

She had not allowed Dr. Chakwas to send the message they had worked on this morning to Joker.  She knew she had been avoiding talking to him, and that it was her duty as his commander — or, his former commander, she wasn’t sure now — to tell him what had really happened to EDI.  If the rest of the crew were going to know, she had to tell him personally.  She remembered making the video message she had sent to Ashley’s family, after Virmire.  At least then she hadn’t been face to face with them, and they were strangers.  She only hoped Joker would understand. 

“There’s no easy way to say this, Joker,” she began.  Joker looked at her with concern, leaning forward.  He fidgeted with his hands.  “But I have to tell you about EDI.”

“What do you mean?” Joker asked.  “I mean, I was there.  I was next to her when it happened.  And I’d rather not think about it, Shepard.”

“I know,” Shepard said.  She pulled in a deep breath.  She wished that she felt stronger for this, more clear-headed, but she knew it had to be done.  “When I was in the Crucible, I was given three choices for how to use it.  It wasn’t only built to destroy the Reapers.”

Joker’s mouth turned into a thin frown line.  “Go on.”

“One choice was to turn every organic organism partly synthetic, forever.  The Reapers claimed that the war was because synthetic life would inevitably turn on organic life, but if you combined them, then there would be no further need for war.  I — didn’t think I should be allowed to decide for everyone to become part synthetic.  The Reapers would have lived, too.  I would have died but maybe the sacrifice would have been worth it.”

“That sounds like a Reaper’s wet dream, honestly,” scoffed Joker.  “The way they would turn people into husks and marauders and brutes?  This synthesis thing sounds right up their alley.  I’m guessing you didn’t go with that.”

“Another choice was to basically become a Reaper myself.  I would control them all, and I could use them to rebuild instead of destroy.  Again, everyone would live.”

“Except you’d be a  _Reaper_ , Commander!  How do we know you wouldn’t have been indoctrinated like Saren?  That guy thought he was totally in control of the situation, too, and look how well that turned out for him,” said Joker.  He paused.  “Why are you telling me this?” 

“Because I didn’t choose those options.  I chose to destroy the Reapers.  You know that.  But… I knew going into it that EDI, and the geth, would die.”  She lowered her head into her hands.  “I sacrificed her to end the Reapers, and I knew that was exactly what would happen.”  She stumbled over the words.  “She died a hero.  I’m sorry, Jeff.”

There was silence for a moment.  Shepard lifted her head, and saw that Joker was leaning back against the couch, staring up at the stars.  

“Sometimes I wish I didn’t have Vrolik syndrome,” he said, his words a mumble.  “Because there’s times that I feel like beating the shit out of something, and I can’t do it unless I want to beat the shit out of myself.”  He sat up straight, rubbing at his eyes.  “Why did you tell me this?  Not like I was doing a great job coping before, let’s be honest, but now I have to be pissed off at you, too?”  Yet despite his words, there was no anger in his voice, only a bitter loneliness.  “I didn’t  _need_  to know that there was some way we could have saved her.”

“I’m telling you this because I had Dr. Chakwas send out a message to most of the crew, telling them what happened in the Crucible.  I thought you should hear it from me first.  I owe that much to you,” said Shepard, staring down at her shoes.  

“Why’d she send the message?  Why not you?” 

Shepard laughed, but the sound was wheezy and strained.  “It seemed logical because she had to make an announcement anyway.  That I’m going on suicide watch —” the words twisted in her mouth, “— and if you guys are gonna babysit me, we figured you needed the whole story.  Kaidan’s taking over as Commander for now, so if you want to try and beat the shit out of me despite the brittle bones, they won’t charge you with striking a superior.”  She tried laughing again, but it still came out wrong.   

“Jesus, Shepard,” he said.  They sat there for a moment, simply looking at each other.  “Did you — do something?”

She shook her head.  “Garrus found me before anything happened.  I guess I should be glad.”

“Remind me to let him off easy the next time I make fun of him, would you?” Joker said.  “I mean, hell, Commander.”  He gazed at the fish in the tank, biting at his lip.  “I need to go think about this.  And probably drink a fuckload of alcohol.” 

“It’s eleven in the morning,” said Shepard.   

“Yeah, so I’ve already gotten a late start,” said Joker, getting to his feet.  “Look, don’t kill yourself.  Then we’d just have to hold a whole other funeral.”  As the joke left his mouth, his face tightened.  “I’m gonna take EDI to Tiptree after the relays get patched up.  I don’t want to think about a Shepard funeral too.”  He sighed, turning to leave.  “This is — it’s gonna take some time.” 

“I know,” she said, looking sadly up at him.  “I’m sorry.  I miss her, too.” 

“I don’t want to hear about it,” Joker said roughly, waving a hand at her.  “I understand what you did, I do, but just let me figure this out on my own.”  He glanced back at her once, and she could see the gleam of tears in his eyes.  “Stay safe, though.”

“I’ll do what I can.”  As he left she dutifully pulled up her omni-tool to summon Dr. Chakwas.  

It could have gone worse, she reflected.  By that token, though, it could have gone better.  She wasn’t sure what she had been hoping for.  Had she wanted Joker to rail at her, scream at her, storm off the ship?  Or had she been expecting him to tell her he understood how difficult it was, that he forgave her?  She supposed that him telling her not to kill herself was probably a fairly decent outcome.

Instead of feeling relieved that she was no longer hiding this information from him, the guilt writhed in her gut.  She remembered this after Virmire, after Akuze.  Sometimes getting things off her chest only put them back on her shoulders.  She slumped forward, her face falling back into her hands.  Maybe it’d be good not to be the commander for a while.


	16. Pugilism

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The men work some things out.

Garrus dragged himself down to the kitchen.  He had managed to steal a few hours of sleep, but it was marked with constant interjections from half-dreams.  He almost would have preferred a full nightmare instead of the vague, shallow sleep he had found himself in, where conscious thoughts mingled with the sleep state to make it feel as if he was not sleeping at all.  Thoughts like  _Can Shepard get through this?_  and  _Can **we**  get through this?_  He loved her, more than he’d ever loved anyone, and yet this was something that couldn’t be won with love alone.  

After that restless nap he woke up feeling ill instead of hungry.  Still, though, it had been hours since he’d eaten something.  He was not looking forward to dextro nutrient paste, but it was all they had left on board.  Longingly he remembered the dextro bacon that he had stored in Shepard’s freezer back on the Citadel.  The apartment was probably rubble now, with the bacon going bad if it hadn’t been merely disintegrated.  He thought wistfully of the way she had taken him back to that apartment after their tango, pulling hard on his hand the whole way home with her cheeks red and her eyes bright.  She’d hurried into the apartment and shoved him back against the wall, and before he’d registered what happened she had been tearing his shirt open, kissing his chest, fingers fumbling with the buttons on his pants, her lips tracing their way down to —

Garrus shook his head.  The memory was a sweet one but on the way to breakfast was perhaps not the best place to relive it, especially when he was wearing armor.  For some reason armor tended to be needlessly tight in the groin regions.

He adjusted the armor uncomfortably, chafing at the way he hadn’t yet worn in this set.  It rubbed against his carapace in an awkward way, and the feet were a little too big.  He stepped out of the elevator and rounded the corner.  Kaidan and James were in the kitchen, eating sandwiches.  Garrus liked the idea of a portable meat delivery system, but turian bread was fairly tasteless and when he had tried making sandwiches before he inevitably pulled out everything from the middle and ate it separately.  Maybe the nutrient paste would be better today, anyway.  He walked up beside them.

“Kaidan.  James,” he said, giving them each a tired half-nod.  He reached over Kaidan’s head for the dextro cupboard and pulled out a few tubes of meat rations.  

“Hey, Garrus,” said James.  He looked unusually quiet, leaning against the counter with his arms crossed over his chest.  “How’re you holding up?  We got Doc’s message this morning.”

For a moment Garrus wasn’t sure what he was talking about, even though he had read Dr. Chakwas’ message before getting up.  He must have slept more poorly than he had thought.  Then he remembered.  “Not great,” he said briefly.  He turned to Kaidan.  “Congratulations, Commander Alenko.”  He didn’t mean it to come out as bitter as it sounded.

Kaidan shook his head, waving one hand.  “Hackett can call me that all you want, but you guys know I’m just a placeholder until Shepard gets back on her feet.  This is her ship, her crew.  And you know we’ll do anything we can for her.”  He clapped Garrus on the shoulder.  “That goes for you, too.  I know this must be hard.” 

Garrus stared at the tubes of nutrient paste in his hands.  He didn’t want these.  What he wanted was for things to get back to normal, for Kaidan and James to stop being so serious, for Shepard to be back in her element.  “Yeah,” he said.  “Yeah, it is.”   

“Let us know if there’s anything we can do to help, Sca- Garrus,” said James, interrupting himself halfway through the name  _Scars_.

“You know, there is something that might help,” said Garrus, tossing the tubes on the counter.  He chuckled drily.  “I’ve been feeling an intense need to kill something, and since Shepard wiped out all the Reapers, I’ve run out of targets.  You guys up for some sparring?  Or are you worried this beat-up turian would kick both your asses?”

James arched an eyebrow.  “L2, I say we help the man out.”

***

Garrus grunted as he took a punch in the jaw from James, the blow of it knocking him back.  He countered with a sharp elbow to the human’s chest.  James reeled backwards for a step, then bounced back on his toes, ducking his head to charge Garrus.  Garrus sidestepped and drove his arms against James’ back, knocking him to the ground in the shuttle bay.  

“Not gonna fall for that one,” Garrus panted.  James shook his head, getting up from the floor and shifting his shoulders in his armor.  

“Not bad, not bad,” said James, grinning.  Sweat shone on his brow.  “Of course, I was going easy on you.”

“Now you’re just making things up,” said Garrus.  “You look a little tired, Vega.  Maybe Alenko needs a turn.”  He flexed his hands, his joints cracking.  

Kaidan had been leaning against the wall, suited up and watching them.  He nodded at Garrus.  “And what do you think you’re going to do against biotics?” Kaidan asked, grinning.  “You’d better keep up that fancy footwork if you don’t want your ass handed to you.”  

“Ahhh, Shepard’s trained me well,” said Garrus, “don’t worry about that.”  James and Kaidan looked at each other and laughed, before Kaidan peeled himself away from the wall and started circling Garrus.

The blood sang in Garrus’ veins, flushing the skin beneath his fringe.  He fixed his gaze on Kaidan, and just as the human began to crackle with blue energy Garrus struck, whirling and kicking the biotic’s legs out from under him.  Kaidan turned it into a roll as he hit the floor, and bounced back to his feet, flinging a blast at Garrus.  Garrus leaped out of the way, but the blast hit his arm and leg.  He gasped, feeling energy drain out of him.  His head spun for a moment and Kaidan hung back, fists up.

“Told you to watch yourself, Garrus,” said Kaidan.  James let out a whoop.

Garrus’ head began to clear.  He settled into a defensive posture as Kaidan moved around him.  Garrus blocked an uppercut into his ribs and responded with a headbutt to the chest.  Kaidan reeled back, staggering, as Garrus followed with a kick to the abdomen.  He reached for Kaidan’s arm and pulled him into a throw, using his momentum to fling the human to the ground.

The effort exhausted him, but Kaidan was on the ground, rolling over to his side and wheezing.  “Damn,” he said, winded.  “All right, so turians are pretty good at this.”  He got back up to his feet, dusting himself off.  He started to commiserate with James. 

Garrus panted, leaning over and resting his hands on his knees.  His muscles ached and part of him was as tired as ever.  He wanted to go back up and sleep.  But the other part of him was thrumming with energy, his heart pounding in his chest, the pulse in his neck vibrating, his mind still searching for a target.  It wasn’t enough.  He wanted to hit, to hurt, to kill.  He remembered Shepard crying on the floor, the way she looked half-conscious in an Alliance hospital bed, the weight of her memorial name plate in his hands, the way she would tremble in his arms after yet another nightmare.  He remembered half-whispered prayers to the spirits, the helplessness of not knowing about his family, Palaven burning, burning.  He remembered Omega, Sidonis, corpses of good men strewn about the base like so much trash.  He remembered failure, again and again. 

Before he knew what he was doing his mind registered that he had slammed into both James and Kaidan, knocking them to the ground in a vicious charge.  He straddled one of them — he wasn’t even sure which — and he struck, again and again.  His fingers smashed into armor, into flesh; he shook off the hands of one of the men, knocking him to the ground again.  There was nothing but rage, nothing but the desire to control something, eliminate it, destroy it.

Suddenly the world disappeared, and Garrus was floating, frozen, tingling.  His vision cleared and he realized that he was being held aloft in a mix of blue and green energy.  Kaidan squinted at him through one swollen eye with his hand thrust out, holding him aloft.  Next to him was James, gingerly sitting up, with blood trickling from his nose and mouth.  Behind them Javik was staring inscrutably, a green glow around him. 

Javik and Kaidan lowered their hands, and Garrus felt solid ground beneath him.  The buzzing of the biotic energy left him feeling boneless, and he collapsed to his hands and knees, staring at the ground.

“Garrus, what the hell?” asked Kaidan, kneeling down next to James.  “You okay?”

James rubbed his head, groaning.  “I’ll live.  Remind me never to piss that guy off.  He fights like a damn krogan!”

Javik approached, reaching a hand out to Garrus.  Garrus waved it away, but Javik grabbed his hand, his fingers quickly searching the edge of Garrus’ glove until his fingers contacted bare skin.  Garrus recoiled, shivering as the Prothean read him.  

Javik looked down at him.  “The turian was taking out his anger and grief on you, as he is failing to adjust to recent events.  He is emotionally compromised, but did not desire to do either of you harm.  We can always throw him out of the airlock if he continues to present a threat.”  He sounded almost hopeful about the idea.

“Uh, thanks, Javik, I think,” said Kaidan awkwardly.  “We probably should have seen that coming.  Anyway, we can’t throw him out of the airlock, Shepard would be pissed.” 

Garrus slowly climbed to his feet.  His breath was slowing, his heart rate returning to normal.  He felt dizzy from the effects of the biotics, and ashamed at the way his emotions had got the better of him.  Turians liked to blow off steam with sparring, but he realized that if no one had been able to stop him, he might have seriously injured James.

He hung his head.  “Look, James, Kaidan — I’m sorry.  I lost control.” 

Kaidan helped James up to his feet, and they walked to Garrus, James limping a little.  “Do you think it helped, beating the crap out of me?” asked James.  He rubbed some of the blood off his face, smearing it with a gloved hand.

“I —”  Garrus considered.  “Maybe a little.” 

“Well then, what are friends for?” said James, shrugging.  “We wanted to help you out, so mission accomplished.” 

Kaidan laughed.  “Man, Vega, you are too much.”  He looked at Garrus for a moment, considering him.  “I’m glad you usually fight with us, not against us, Garrus.  Just next time, give us a warning when your murder level is a ten out of ten.” 

Garrus let out a long breath, noticing how many places he ached in.  “Sure thing, Commander.”  This time, there was no bitterness in his voice.  He managed a half-smile.  Some of the rage at his helplessness with Shepard had dissipated.  He could still feel it lurking there, with all the old feelings of failure and inadequacy, worry and fear.  But it had shrunk down again to something that might be manageable.

“It’s Kaidan, and don’t you forget it.  Now come on, anyone else ready for food?  I’m starving.  Again.”

They walked back toward the elevator, all three of them moving a little more slowly.  They ignored Javik when he disappointedly called back, “So we are not utilizing the airlock plan, then?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry I can't get over finding Javik hilarious
> 
> And I'm sorry for the tease of sexytimes in there, heh! Maybe once Shepard heals up a bit we can revist that topic more properly.


	17. Embracing Eternity

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shepard and Liara have some girl talk.

“So,” said Shepard awkwardly, leaning against the back of her sofa.  “Uh, how’ve you been?”

Liara furrowed her brow.  “Is that the best you can do, Shepard?”  She was perched on the end of Shepard’s couch, the stars above them glimmering.  Dr. Chakwas had put them on a schedule of frequently visiting Shepard, and Liara was eager to speak to Shepard for the first time since Earth.

“Cut me some slack, Liara,” said Shepard, pretending to look wounded.  But Liara noted that her facial movements were just a touch subdued, just a little sluggish.  “These new meds Karin started me on are making me a little loopy, to be honest.  I think there’s at least one antidepressant, maybe two?  I’m not feeling especially effervescent right now.”

“It’s understandable,” said Liara.  She smoothed the front of her jacket, unsure of what to say.  She had not encountered a situation like this before in her century of existence.  She wondered if there was some etiquette guide available for how to interact with friends and leaders following a crisis.  Reflecting, she figured there probably were a million of them.  She made a mental note to have Glyph compile the best later.  “Since you asked, I’m doing better than I was a week or two ago before we knew… your status.  I’m still not sleeping well, though, as I am doing what I can to continue my work as the Shadow Broker.  Communications are spotty throughout the galaxy, but I am getting the network up the best I can.”

“A worthy goal,” said Shepard.  She fidgeted with her hands, looking down at the backs of them.  Liara noted the newly healed wounds on her skin.  “You think you can keep it going?”

“It’s certainly my intention,” Liara said.  “Even without the threat of Reapers, there are still going to be people who will need information.  The Shadow Broker flourished before this war, there will certainly be work for me now that it’s over.”  She shrugged.  “But I didn’t come here to talk about information brokering.  I wanted to see how you are doing.”

A hesitant smile played about Shepard’s lips, never quite coalescing into the real thing.  She ducked her head, her hair falling into her eyes.  “Better than yesterday, I guess.”

“Do you — want to talk about it?” Liara asked, hating the strained sound in her voice.  She crossed her legs, leaning back.  

“You saw what was in the report, right?” Shepard asked.  Liara nodded.  “You take that, and you take the last three years, and — I’m surprised something like this didn’t happen sooner.  It almost felt inevitable, as if it was something that was bound to happen to me.  Like I was done cheating death.  Luckily, Garrus found me before I did something I couldn’t take back.  I think I’m glad about it.”  She winced, adjusting the way she was sitting, and tried to change the subject.  “Stupid leg.  I’m not sure I can ever get it back to how it was.  Dr. Chakwas thinks it’ll probably take some advanced cybernetics to add to the collection I already have going.”

Liara considered.  The way that Shepard  _shone_  with passion and strength had been one of the first things that had drawn Liara to her.  To think of that woman wanting to end things…  Liara scooted next to Shepard and pulled her into a hug, resting her head against Shepard’s shoulder.  She closed her eyes, remembering for a moment how she used to hold Shepard before.  She still missed those days, sometimes, but this — their friendship — was precious, too.  She whispered, “ _I’m_  glad you’re here.  No matter what’s happened, you deserve to be here, with us.”  Shepard sank into the embrace, exhaling.  

They stayed like that for a moment, Liara shuddering at the thought of having to grieve Shepard again just when it had seemed she was safe.  She pulled back, looking into Shepard’s face.  

Shepard looked as if she was fighting back tears, which startled Liara.  Liara had never seen her get close to teary-eyed before.  “Shepard, it’s all right,” she said softly. 

“I talked to Joker today,” said Shepard.  “I told him that what happened to EDI wasn’t… that it could have been prevented, if I’d chosen another way.” 

“How did he take it?” Liara asked, worried.  “He hasn’t been doing well to begin with.  I see him at the lounge bar more often than in the cockpit these days.  And I still don’t know if he ever got final word on his sister.  I don’t think his father made it out of Tiptree.”  She hesitated.  “Do you think it was wise to tell him that about EDI?”

“I don’t know.  It probably didn’t help him, at all,” said Shepard grimly.  “But I couldn’t add lying by omission to the list of things I’ve done wrong.  He might come around.  He said he was glad I didn’t go through killing myself.  I guess that’s hopeful.”  She sighed.  “It’s just — I’m only just now beginning to realize that with everything that’s happened, I can’t go back to the person that I used to be.  For the first few days it hadn’t fully sunk in.  I thought about things, but I didn’t understand how heavy they were.”  She rubbed the back of her neck, looking away from Liara.  “I don’t want to die.  Not really.”

Liara reached out and squeezed her free hand, just for a moment.  “I’m glad of that.”  She thought, trying to get her words in order.  “You do realize, though, that no one ever goes back to the person that they used to be.  Do you think that an asari maiden is the same person she becomes five hundred years later?  No.  You’re always changing.  Every day we are different people.   It’s just that something tremendous happened to you to make you see the change happening.  It doesn’t make you wrong to be a different Shepard than you were before.”

“That sounds logical, I guess….  But it doesn’t mean that living as this new Shepard is going to be — easy.”  Shepard laughed, showing a hint of her white teeth.  “As if it was easy before.  But this feels orders of magnitude larger than anything I’ve ever dealt with.”  She looked at Liara, her eyes apologetic.  “I’m sorry, Liara.  I think I’m just spouting off what I talked about with the Alliance counselor.  Dr. Chakwas found one who could meet with me from her ship.  I wasn’t keen on it, like I wasn’t after Akuze, but maybe it will help.  I remember it did help then, eventually.”

“I think it will.  We all care about you here, but perhaps we are too close to be able to say what you need to hear.”  Liara gave her a sad smile.  “You’re right.  It’s not going to be easy.  But you know that all of us are here for you, whatever you need.”

Shepard nodded, but Liara could sense the exhaustion coming from her.  “Here,” said Liara.  “I never got a chance to show you this before, but I do know a few meditative exercises that might help you.  They helped me after I lost my mother.”

Shepard was the one to reach out for Liara’s hand now, clasping it briefly.  “I’d like that, Liara.”  She grinned ruefully.  “I can’t promise I won’t fall asleep immediately, but it seems worth a try at least.”

“Sleep can be meditative as well,” said Liara.  “Though if you snore as loudly as I remember, it may not be particularly restful meditation.”  She winked.

“Hey, that’s a low blow,” said Shepard.  “That was  _one_  time and I had a cold that  _somebody_  gave to me.”  She laughed at the memory.

“I know, but sometimes it is rather fun to tease you, Shepard,” said Liara slyly.  “Now, normally to meditate you would assume a pose like this.”  She slid down onto the floor, crossing her legs beneath her.  “Are you able to sit on the floor at all, or do you need the cushioning?  You can stay on the couch if you prefer.”

“If you can help me down, I think I can sit on the ground.  It’s bending that’s a little tricky right now,” said Shepard.  Liara helped her down, and Shepard sat with her back against the couch, her legs stretched out straight in front of her.

“It will be easiest if I show you,” Liara said.  “May I?”  She lifted one hand and gestured towards Shepard’s temple. 

“Let’s give it a shot,” Shepard said.  

Liara reached out.  “Embrace eternity,” she murmured, resting her hand against Shepard’s cheek and temple.  Energy crackled in Liara’s fingertips, and she let her memories of meditation, relaxation, breathing, and release meld into Shepard’s mind.  As the connection was maintained, though, memories of Shepard’s began to bleed through.  

Liara saw herself, running through the Normandy SR-1 as the ship rocked beneath heavy fire.  She saw glimpses of Reapers descending through smoke-choked skies, a frightened human child hiding in a vent; the drell Thane Krios coughing in a hospital bed, the geth unit Legion collapsing to the ground, Shepard’s fist slamming into the face of her own clone.  She tasted blood, heard screams.  Garrus’s face swam before her, and she saw him collapsed on a floor in a spreading pool of blue, heard the rattling breaths he drew.  She saw him here in this cabin, lust smoldering in his eyes, reaching to unbutton his shirt — and she quickly pulled back from the meld, stifling a nervous giggle.  She didn’t need to see  _that_.

Shepard shook her head, reeling a little where she sat.  “I’d forgotten how intense that could be,” she said.  “I did understand what you were showing me about meditation.” 

“I saw some memories of yours as well,” said Liara.  “People who have died.  Reapers.  Destruction.  Is that what you keep remembering?” 

“Yes.  And more.”  Shepard gave Liara a long, searching look.  “These things never leave, do they?”

Liara rested her hands on her knees in a basic meditation pose.  “It is something that we eventually learn to live with,” she said.  “At least, that’s what every matriarch I’ve ever asked about it has said.  With our lifespans, it is inevitable that we will experience profound loss at some point, perhaps many times.  You could go mad if you dwelled on it.” 

“You’re telling me.”  Shepard stretched out her hands to her knees, allowing her shoulders to relax.  “So how do I take these things that… haunt me… and live with them?  Because I don’t think forgetting them entirely is an option.”

“No, it’s not,” Liara agreed.  “But you start simply.  You take one breath, and you let it out.  Then you do it again.”

Shepard took a deep breath through her nose, letting it out slowly through her mouth.  A tangled strand of hair hanging over her face fluttered with the exhalation.  “I guess I can do that.”

“Yes,” Liara said gently, “you can.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Part of me is still so sad that my Shepard broke things off with Liara in ME2 and went for Garrus. But they make wonderful friends, too. :)


	18. Shepard vas Normandy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shepard and Tali catch up.

Shepard was tired.  It had been a draining day in so many ways, even disregarding the events of the night before.  Today there had been the conversation with Joker, her first meeting with a counselor, new medications, meditation with Liara.  Dr. Chakwas had told her that though it used to take weeks for moods to be regulated in the past, scientific advancement now allowed for more rapid adjustment, though there was still an element of trial and error.  Despite the weariness, she had felt better today, less weighed down, less empty.  She had been able to laugh with Liara now and then, instead of seesawing between emptiness and crushing despair. 

It was dinner time, and though part of her wanted to try and take up the challenge of eating with the crew again, she was simply too worn out.  She tucked into a large bowl of ramen noodles in her cabin, balancing the bowl on her knees as she ate on the sofa.  It would be easier to eat at the computer desk, but it was more comfortable to extend her leg out in front of her as she ate, instead of folding it beneath the counter.

She slurped noodles mechanically, barely tasting the salty broth.  One of the ensigns had brought up the food to her, handing it to her bashfully with a stammered, “Here’s your dinner, ma’am.”  He had darted back out into the hallway, leaving Shepard to chuckle in the empty cabin.  Was she really that intimidating?  Maybe.  The new facial scars did make her look a little roguish.

She was grateful that Dr. Chakwas felt that she could be alone at least for brief periods.  Shepard did not think that she was really a risk to herself now, at least, not today.  When she thought back to last night, the memory seemed hazy and bizarre.  Had that really been her on the ground in her nightgown, wanting to take her own life?  It seemed like some other person’s world, not her own.

Yet when she allowed herself to sit here in the quiet, doubt crept back into her mind.  Memory hovered around the edge of her awareness.  The red earth of Rannoch was dry and crumbly beneath her boots.  How grieved she had been, to see Legion’s empty platform.  And yet how exultant, to realize that the geth could live in peace with the rest of the galaxy, and that the geth and the quarians would learn to work together.  She had bought this peace with passion and fire in her voice, enough to stop the might of the quarian fleet from falling on an enemy too great for them to match.  Which only made the geth’s end even more ignominious.  Now they were fully aware of the folly of their existence. 

Shepard tried to focus on chewing the noodles in her soup.  She slurped them into her mouth, breathing a little more rapidly than she would like.   _You’re eating dinner, not thinking about the geth_ , she tried to tell herself.  If only she had never gotten to speak to them; if only she had never realized that they could be reasoned with, that they wanted only to be left to themselves.  Then she wouldn’t care.

Shepard sighed.  Her noodles suddenly seemed like slivers of cardboard soaked in musty water.  She set the bowl down on the coffee table, though it was still half-full.

“Shepard, are you in there?” Tali’s voice came over the intercom.  Shepard had thought herself too tired for more interaction, but the idea of seeing Tali again was far preferable to being alone with her thoughts for too long.  “I wanted to say hello.” 

“Come on in, Tali,” said Shepard, keying the command on her omni-tool.  She reached for the cane leaning against the couch, and with a little effort managed to get back on her feet.  It was getting easier.  She was learning to avoid flexing the right half of her abdominal muscles, over the area where she still felt tender; if she pulled from the left side, she was able to to pull herself up with only a slight twinge.  Leaning on the cane helped, too.   

Tali entered the cabin.  “Shepard!  It’s so good to see you!”

Shepard noted the new patches on Tali’s suit, fitting in almost seamlessly with the rest.  She had been so grateful that moment before her life changed, when Tali and Garrus were able to hobble their way to safety.  She limped forward to meet Tali, and flung her arms around the quarian, leaning heavily on her good leg.  Tali returned the hug just as fiercely, the faceplate of her suit pressed against Shepard’s cheek as they embraced.

“I could say the same to you, Tali,” said Shepard, pulling back.  “You and Garrus had me worried, back in London.  Don’t you guys know how to dodge a Mako when it comes at you?” 

Tali flicked her head back to one side, one hand swiping in front of her in a dismissive gesture.  “Oh please, Shepard.  Surviving your driving was good practice.  I mean, sure, I had a few near-fatal suit ruptures, and I was in bed with fever for a week, but still.  I barely had a scratch.” 

“Whereas I have this new and very stylish cane,” said Shepard.  “I’d dance with it like in the old Earth vids, but no one wants to see that.” 

“Come on, let’s sit down,” said Tali.  “I don’t want to wear you out.  I know you didn’t really get much sleep last night.”  Tali helped Shepard back to the couch and they took a seat.  Tali fidgeted with the spot on her wrist where her glove met her sleeve; she always seemed to do that when she was nervous, Shepard had noticed.

“No, I guess not,” said Shepard.  She was starting to tire of these conversations.  She knew her friends would be shocked, of course, but she had figured it was better for them to hear it officially instead of secondhand from each other.  She hadn’t wanted Garrus to be walking around, holding a secret in check.  But now that everyone was asking her about it she was starting to wish she had asked Karin not to say anything.  

“It’s okay if you don’t feel like talking about it,” said Tali, waving her hands to placate her.  “I don’t think I would want to talk about it, if it was me.  At least not at first.  One thing about growing up in the migrant fleet is that you tend to value your privacy whenever you can get it.”

“I know you’ve said the Normandy is incredibly spacious compared to the flotilla, but sometimes I feel like I know what you mean,” said Shepard, looking down at her uneaten food.  She was grateful for the opportunity to talk about something else.  “It’s home to me, that’s for sure.  And I know I couldn’t make it without everyone here.  But sometimes you just want a little quiet.”

“That’s one reason why I like being down in engineering,” said Tali quietly.  “When Adams and Donnelly are engrossed in their work, then it feels like it’s just me, and the very heart of the Normandy.  The sound — it fills me up, and helps me think.  It keeps me focused when I need to be, but it distracts me when I need that, too.”  

“That sounds nice, Tali.  Maybe I’ll try it out,” Shepard said.  A thought struck her, one that made her shiver.  She tried not to hope too fiercely.  In a low voice she said, “You know, there’s something I was hoping to ask you.” 

“Shoot.  Well, don’t really shoot.  You know what I mean.”

“Have you — after what happened.  Did you take a look at EDI?” Shepard asked, the words tumbling out of her mouth.  She felt uncomfortable even asking, given Tali’s previous feelings towards synthetics, but she charged forward regardless.  “Is there any way to bring her back?” she said hopelessly.

Tali looked down at her hands which she had folded in her lap, the six fingers intertwining nervously.  “I’m sorry, Shepard.  Joker asked me to try and examine her, once I was out of bed and feeling better.  I looked through all of her hardware, both on the mobile platform and in the AI core.  What she was before… it’s gone.  I’m not exactly an expert in synthetic intelligence and how it works, but I can tell when there’s nothing there.  Not even a quarian could fix the damage done in her memory circuits and her processors.” 

Shepard’s fingers curled into a fist, and she slammed it into the couch cushion she was sitting on.  She breathed heavily through her nose, her mouth twisted.  “I guess I knew that was probably the case.  I just hoped that maybe what I’d been told in the Crucible was wrong.”  She shook her head.  “And the geth?  Have you heard from the other admirals?”

“Everything I’ve heard says they’re completely gone.” 

They sat quietly for a few moments, the silence settling around them like a shroud.  Shepard felt sick after the noodles she had eaten.  They felt like a leaden weight in the pit of her stomach.  She didn’t know why she had let herself get her hopes up.  She knew she would have heard from Garrus or Liara or someone if there had truly been a lead on restoring any of the synthetic intelligences.  But she had grown to trust Tali’s judgment on anything technology-based, and she had hoped if there was a spark to find, Tali would have found it.

“Hey, Shepard,” said Tali.  “I read the document.  You made the right choice.” 

“But your people were in conflict with the geth for three hundred years.  You had only just started to think of the geth as being truly alive,” said Shepard.  “I made that leap a month after Legion joined our crew, once he — it — started sharing what the geth were really like.  I was so happy when we found peace on Rannoch.”

“You did a great thing that day,” said Tali, reaching out and laying her hand on Shepard’s shoulder.  She squeezed, gently.  “And it’s true that the quarians and the geth will never get to know now what we might have learned from each other.  But it wasn’t you who killed them.  It was the Reapers.  It always comes back to them.  How many races have they destroyed throughout history?  We’ll never know how many.  The geth were their last victims.”

“I could’ve chosen otherwise,” said Shepard stubbornly.

“But who came up with the choices in the first place?” Tali asked, pulling her hand back.  She mimed her fist hitting her palm.  “The little bosh’tet that was in control of the Reapers.  It’s not like you went up to EDI or the geth and killed them for no reason.  They were casualties, and that’s terrible, but we all knew that was a risk in this war.”

“It’s still so heavy on me, though,” Shepard said in a small voice.  “It makes me feel so tired.  Tired of choosing.  Tired of deciding.  Last night… I was tired of living.”  She shook her head.  “And it’s not just what happened with the Crucible.  It’s all the things that came before, too.”

Tali nodded.  “We’ve all been worried about you for a long time,” she said softly.  “Especially after Cerberus.” 

“It was a very  _weird_  year,” said Shepard, laughing at the enormity of the understatement she had just uttered.  “It still doesn’t seem real.  Learning I’d been dead for two years and rebuilt in a lab… it does things to your head.  Makes you doubt who you really are, what you know about yourself.”  

Tali considered this, tilting her head to one side.  “Well, I can tell you what I know about you,” she said carefully.  “Let’s see.  I know that you’re a good person, who’s been through a lot.  I know you’re the best commander I’ll ever have.  And I know you like toy spaceships, and shooting things, and dancing badly, and turian vigilantes.  Don’t worry, Shepard.  We know who you are,” said Tali warmly.  

Shepard brooded on this for a moment.  Everyone seemed to still think that the essence of who she was was still there, trapped underneath the new wounds and the new memories.  Maybe they were right.  Maybe she could take this idea and carry it with her like a talisman, protection against the lonely times and the times when her mind told her she was different and changed.  She felt a smile falter onto her face, thinking of friends and laughter and joy.

“Speaking of turians….” Shepard said, “I never got a chance to ask you about what you were saying the night we had the party, after you told me about your omni-tattoo.  Something about Garrus?  And you, and me?  And the three of us?”    

Tali let out an outrageously undignified squawk, hiding her face in her hands.  “Oh  _keelah_ I didn’t just dream that?  That was  _real_?  I can’t believe you remembered that!”

Shepard burst out laughing.  “Hey, it was your idea, not mine!  Though I have to admit, if I ever had my eye on a quarian, it’d be you.”

“Because I’m practically the only quarian you know?” huffed Tali.

“Nah, it’s more the —” Shepard gestured, curving her hands in front of her in an exaggerated hourglass shape.  “I’m just saying, that’s  _very_  easy on the eyes.”  A grin tugged at her lips.

“This is so embarrassing,” Tali muttered.  “You are the  _worst_ , Shepard.”

“I’m just messing with you!  But I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t thought about half the people on this ship at least once or twice….  Being in command gets awfully lonely sometimes.”  She tried to stop a giggle from escaping.  It was strange to start to feel something a little like happiness again. 

“No!  Really?”  Tali leaned back, thinking.  “Well, obviously there was Liara… and didn’t Kaidan like you, too, in the beginning?  Garrus… who else?” 

“Kelly and I always flirted,” said Shepard, raising her eyebrows suggestively.  “I couldn’t help it, she was always so charming!  And Traynor was definitely into me, but we made better friends.  I might have been tempted if it hadn’t been for Garrus, but I’m a one-turian woman these days.” 

“My, my.  Clearly I need to get to know you a little better,” said Tali.  She stopped, holding out one hand.  “Wait.  I didn’t mean it like that —”

They laughed until Shepard’s stomach hurt.  Still, it felt good to be laughing about silly things with a friend, poking fun at each other, reveling in the ridiculous instead of being weighed down by the world.

It felt good.


	19. The Warm and Wet

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shepard needs good memories to balance out the bad.

Garrus woke up abruptly, feeling a sudden chill on the bare skin of his back and legs  He drowsily rolled over, groaning as he felt the protests of fresh bruises from his sparring with Kaidan and James.  Shepard had been so annoyed at him when he showed up to her room at the end of the evening with his cheek blue and swollen.  She had told him sternly that beating the crap out of something to cope with one’s problems worked better when it wasn’t two against one.  He had retorted by asking her how many times she’d made it ten against one, and grudgingly she had admitted he had a point.

He reached out for Shepard to pull her close, and found only the blankets in a pile.  Her side of the bed was empty. 

“Shepard?  Sweetie?” he mumbled, still half-asleep.  He blinked, his eyes adjusting to the dim light of the stars and the night-time setting on the fish tank.  He realized that he could hear running water.  Her shower was on. 

Garrus sat up gingerly, and checked the time on his omni-tool.  It was three in the morning.  He shut down the clock and hurriedly got to his feet.  There was no reason for her to be showering in the middle of the night.  What if she had only turned on the water so that he wouldn’t hear any other sounds?  His heart hammered in his chest as he rapidly cleared the distance from the bed to the bathroom door.

“Shepard?” he called through the door.  “What are you doing?”

There was no answer, only the sound of water pelting the floor.  

Garrus knocked on the door, rapping his fingers against it.  “I’m coming in there,” he called.  Still no answer.  He swiped his hand over the door lock, and it slid open, releasing a cloud of steam.  

Shepard was sitting naked on the ground beneath the running water, her good leg drawn up to her chin, her bad leg stretched out before her, her arms laying at her sides.  Her hair was plastered to her face.  She shook her head, startled, and looked up at him.   

“What are you doing in here, Garrus?” she asked quizzically.

“I —”  He was at a loss for words.  He stood there awkwardly in the doorway of the bathroom, unsure of what he wanted to say.  _I was scared you would try to hurt yourself._   “Just wondered where you were,” he said. 

By the look in her eyes he knew that she understood what he hadn’t said.  She looked down at her bare legs.  “I was cold.”

“Are you all right?”

“I don’t know anymore,” she said, spitting water out of her mouth.  She wiped her soaking hair out of her eyes.  Water ran over her shoulders, her breasts, her belly and legs in rivulets and streams.  The bruises weren’t so dark now, the scars beginning to fade into the canvas of her skin.  She seemed to be healing quickly.  Maybe it was the Cerberus upgrades, or Dr. Chakwas’ medicine, but whatever it was, he was glad of it for her sake.

“Want to talk about it?” he asked.  “Looks like there might be room for two down there.”

She winked at him.  “You should know by now there’s always room for two in this shower, Garrus.”  She shifted over to the side, and he sat down next to her, back against the wall.  The hot water pelting his skin felt good, but the way she slipped under his arm to press against his side felt better.  He still couldn’t get over how soft and smooth she was.  He leaned his head against hers, angling his face so that the water massaged the bruised area. 

“How are you?” he asked, licking water from the edge of his mouth.

“I thought I was feeling better today,” she began.  She reached out, running one hand over his chest as she spoke.  “It was good to see Liara and Tali.  And I spoke with a counselor, and that was good, too.  Seeing Joker was hard, but… really, I thought I was doing okay.” 

“So why are you here on the bathroom floor?” 

“I woke up.  Had another nightmare.  Didn’t want to fall asleep again, so I came in here.”  She was quiet for a few moments, the only sound that of the water.  “It was almost a relief at first, because it was nothing to do with Reapers or the war.  But then I realized where I was.  Back on Omega.”

He thought about what she’d done on Omega recently.  Was she talking about her mad attack with Aria to take the place over?  He’d gritted his teeth about it, since he knew they needed the resources, but she had been lucky to make it out of there at all.  It had infuriated him that he couldn’t be there to watch her back.  “You mean you were there with Aria?”

She laughed loudly, but the sound was weak in the middle, cracks running along through it.  He was never sure how intentional the different shades in human voices were; turian subharmonics afforded great subtlety to their vocalizations, but he had a feeling that the range in human voices was involuntary, like the way Shepard’s cheeks would turn pink when she was embarrassed or angry.  Right now she sounded amused and heartsick both.  “Are all turians this oblivious?  I’m talking about  _you_ , Archangel.” 

He groaned at the obviousness of it.  Of course.  “Sorry, Shepard.  I just woke up, I’m still a little slow.” 

She kissed his cheek, then leaned her head against the wall.  The water on her face looked like tears.  “The dream took me back to that time before I knew how much I needed you.  When my life belonged to a stranger, and suddenly you were the one person who made me feel like I could remember who I was… and you were on the ground bleeding out.”

Garrus wrapped both arms around her, and kissed her.  She clutched at him, and he could feel her trembling.

“I couldn’t stop the bleeding,” she said rapidly.  “There was blue everywhere.  The floor, your armor, my hands…  And you couldn’t speak.  I’d never seen you like that before.”

“I’m okay,” he reminded her.  He put her hand over his scars, interlacing their fingers.  “See?  I’m just uglier than I used to be, but I’m here.”

She was still trembling.  “In the dream we never got you onto the Normandy.  I kept seeing it again and again.  The way you were hit — the way you were stretched out on the ground — your face —”

“Look at me,” he said, hooking one finger beneath her chin to tip her face upwards.  The lights overhead sparkled in the water droplets ringing her eyes, her mouth.  “I know it’s not the prettiest sight, but you’re somehow attracted to me, so… look at me.” 

She laughed, one of those broken-in-the-middle laughs, and bit her lip.  Her eyes were steady, looking into his.  He could gaze into them for hours, watching the way the pupils dilated and contracted, their rapid movement, their brilliant color.  This woman, looking at him with such trust on her beautifully alien features, was so much more than he’d ever deserved.  He felt dizzy with love for her. 

“I’m here, Shepard.  We’re in your cabin.  In your shower, even, and it’s just you and me.  No nightmares here.  No bad dreams.  I’m here, and I’m going to take care of you as long as you need me to.”  He kissed her, brushing his mouth against her lips and closing his eyes.   

She moved closer, one hand moving up to caress the sensitive skin on his neck.  He let out a murmur of appreciation before she deepened the kiss, her tongue flicking into his mouth.  He suddenly felt warm in a way that had nothing to do with the hot water raining down upon them. 

“Careful,” he said, pulling back from her mouth just slightly.  He glanced at her, and the trusting look in her eyes was gone, replaced by something much more primal.  “I’m pretty sure you haven’t been released for ‘active duty’ yet, much as I’d like to engage you in it.” 

“Well, no,” she muttered.  He realized she was breathing more heavily, her breasts rising and falling with the action.  He stifled a groan at the sight.  It had taken him some time to get used to them, but once he’d seen the way that playing with them made her flush and pant, he’d been sold on their value.  “But look, Garrus… maybe I just want to feel something that’s not  _miserable_  right now.”  She traced tiny trails along his neck with her fingers, and he swallowed.  “ _Surely_ it would be all right for me to engage in light duty, at least.”  

He responded by kissing her again, this time pulling her up into his lap, taking care not to jostle her bad leg.  The curve of her buttocks pressed against his growing arousal, and she wrapped her arms around him, letting out a soft moan.  “So I’ll take that as a yes,” she said breathlessly. 

“You’re too seductive for your own good,” he said, his voice a low rumble.  With one hand he caressed the softness of her breasts, his fingers slipping on the smooth, wet skin.  She slipped a hand down between their legs, grasping his shaft, and his hips bucked upward.  Oh, he had missed that touch…. 

He groaned as her hand stroked him, languidly at first, then with sharp, sure movements.  The pressure mounted and he was panting as he nipped at her shoulder, traced his tongue along the curve of her breasts, pinched and kneaded her nipple between his fingers.  She ran her other hand over the top of his fringe, then forced his head back so that she could kiss him, hard, their mouths colliding, water dripping off their faces. 

She was panting, too, her breaths quick and soft against his skin.  He slid his hand down past her chest, over the perfect spot where her waist nipped inward, down to where she was wet and warm and swollen.  She hissed as he slowly, teasingly, let his finger glide over her clit, then slipped deep into her.  “God, Garrus,” she moaned as he arched his finger into her.  Her hips ground against him, and the way she squeezed around him…

“Mmm, Shepard, you know I love watching you squirm,” he purred.  He loved the way the blood rushed to her face, her cheeks red, mouth wide in a grimace of pleasure.  She let go of his shaft to wrap her arms around his shoulders and carapace, clinging to him.  He slipped a second finger into her as his thumb worked her clit, and she gasped, the sound both harsh and sweet.  “You like that?” he murmured. 

“ _Fuck_ ,” she bit out as she twisted on his hand, hips thrusting again and again to meet his movements.  Her hands were scrabbling against his skin, fingers clawing at him as she rose to kiss him again.  His hand worked faster, deeper, and she let out a strangled cry.  “ _Please_ , Garrus,” she begged, her legs starting to tremble, her panting ragged.   

“Shepard, come for me,” he growled, holding her tightly against him as his hand arched and thrusted and stroked and fucked, as she writhed and trembled, as the water soaked them both, as his phallus throbbed.  She was shaking now, her body against his electric and gorgeous, her face raw with agony.  “Shepard —”

“Garrus —”  And then she was gasping for air, her mouth stretched in a wide O, eyes clenched tight, quaking in his arms and around his fingers.  Her mouth moved noiselessly in a silent scream, and suddenly she was limp and panting in his arms. 

He gently wiped her dripping hair out of her eyes.  Leisurely she looked back up at him, a slow, lazy smile spreading across her face.  “Thanks,” she said, still catching her breath.  

“Any time,” Garrus said, his mandibles flicking into a grin.  “You all right?”

“Definitely.  But what about you?” Shepard said, reaching to grasp him once more.  His breath caught in his throat.  

“Ahhh, well, I won’t say no if you want to lend a hand,” Garrus said tremulously.  Shepard smiled wickedly at him.

“Let’s get out of this shower before I drown, and then we can take this back to the bed,” Shepard said.  Garrus obliged by turning off the tap.  They must have gone through half the ship’s supply of recycled water, he figured.  Though that didn’t seem especially important right now.  He got to his feet, then pulled Shepard up into his arms.  They quickly toweled off the excess water and he helped her walk back to the bed.

“Lay down, you,” she said, pushing him down with a hand to his chest.  He fell back against the pillows and blankets, then sat up on his elbows to look at her.

“Yes, ma’am,” he smirked, but the smirk was wiped off his face when she bent over him, her wet tongue lapping against him.  He still couldn’t get used to how damn good this felt.  Humans did have their advantages…  Her tongue swirled around the tip of his shaft, and he groaned, throwing his head back.  “Ah, Shepard…”  His fingers dug into the blankets hard enough to pierce them with his talons.   

She laughed, but with his phallus in her mouth it was a maddeningly pleasurable vibration.  Her lips tightened around him as she slid up and down, slowly at first, then faster.  Her mouth was so wet, so smooth, so hot…  He moaned unintelligibly, throbbing against her lips and tongue.  The head of his phallus hit the back of her throat, once, twice, a third time and the depth and the feel were unbearable, fuck, how could she feel this good, he couldn’t handle it —  “ _Shepard_  —” 

She pulled him out just as he came, his body shuddering, his mouth gasping, his come spilling out across her breasts.  He lay there, collapsed and spent.  She stiffly crawled up beside him and curled against him, settling in.  

“See?  Light duty was just fine,” said Shepard smugly, kissing his carapace before rolling back into her side of the bed, her chest glistening.  She let out a long breath.  “I needed that.  Thanks.” 

“Thank  _you_ ,” said Garrus, finally remembering how to string a sentence together.  “I mean, damn, Shepard,” he said admiringly.   

“Good to know I’ve still got it,” she said, yawning.  She was quiet for a moment, staring up at the ceiling.  “I think I figured out what the problem is.”  

“What do you mean?” he asked, glancing over at her in the dim light. 

“It’s like the good moments don’t stick, right now.” 

“Oh?” 

“I had good moments today, where I almost felt like my old self,” she said, rubbing at her eyes.  “I even thought that maybe things were going to be all right.  Not any time soon, but someday, they would be all right.”  She sighed.  “But those moments?  They faded fast.  When I woke up tonight, all I could think about was the nightmare, or — everything else.”  She pulled the blankets up over her legs and hips.  “I know those good things are there, I know I have them, but when the bad things hit — I can’t seem to access them.” 

He reached out and stroked her wet hair, untangling what he could.  He didn’t know what to say.   

“So when you came and checked up on me, I wanted to try and block out that dream I had with something better.  Figured it might at least last until the morning.  So… thanks.”

He leaned over and kissed her on the cheek.  “Love you, Shepard.  Feel free to bother me whenever you need a new memory.” 

She laughed sleepily.  “I’ll take it under advisement.”  It was only a few moments later that he heard the sounds of her breathing change, indicating she had finally fallen asleep again.

Garrus was not far behind her.  He pulled one edge of the blanket over himself, nearly falling asleep with the action.  He wished that they could find a way for Shepard to sleep reliably through the night… but he was grateful that this time, at least, he had been there when she needed him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes I'm a grown ass woman with a fiance who still gets a little flustered writing pr0n, WHAT OF IT? Don't worry, as Shepard gets better we'll probably see more along those lines... Also, I can't be the only one who headcanons that Garrus thinks human mouths are AMAZING, HOLY CRAP, MUCH WOW because as beautiful and fabulous as turian women are their mouths still seem pretty damn sharp. So blowjobs must seem like some kind of ridiculously fantastic invention to a turian dude, LOL! 
> 
> Also work has been just horrid the past week or so, so my writing rate has slowed significantly. Will try to update every other day or so, but we'll see.


	20. Forward

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shepard and Joker speak again.

Slowly the days began to drift back into some kind of routine.  Shepard’s days were filled with work, though it was a different kind of work than what she had been used to before.  There was the work of physical therapy with Dr. Chakwas, the routine of weaning medication schedules, exercises again and again, forcing her body to do what it protested so strongly.  

The mental work was more difficult.  She met with an Alliance counselor daily, sometimes for half an hour, sometimes for three, whatever the day seemed to require.  Shepard felt as if she was simply repeating herself during these talks, but occasionally she noticed that after a session, the memories had been drawn out of her like poison from a wound.  Sometimes, though, the sessions made her feel scrubbed raw, and when that happened she went and laid down in her cabin and stared at the fish.  Some nights she slept well.  Some nights she still woke up sweating, shaking, remembering, and those nights she lay awake next to Garrus in the dark, waiting for the morning. 

Tali and the engineering crew had repaired the rest of the damage to the ship, and reported she was humming again like new.  Traynor had the comms boosted as much as it was possible, given the damage to the galaxy’s infrastructure.  Garrus was reporting optimization of the weaponry, and Liara was gathering intel on how the rest of the galaxy was coping with the vacuum left behind by the war.

Kaidan began to visit Shepard frequently.  He was capable, a good leader, and clever, but she saw the way he felt uncomfortable being Commander of “her” ship.  One day he found her in the lounge, stretching her leg in the spot Samara had once done her meditations.

“Hey, Shepard,” Kaidan said, settling down on the sofa and looking out of the window.  The debris field had begun to shrink as damaged ships were repaired, as cleanup crews began to chip away at the mess of destruction.   

“How’s it going, Kaidan?” Shepard said, grunting a little as she tried to fully flex her knee.  Her range of motion was still limited, and there was a dead zone with no sensation deep in her thigh.  She preferred the strangeness of that feeling to the shooting pains that sometimes struck, though. 

“It goes.”  He seemed pensive, tension firming the set of his shoulders.  Shepard released the stretch she was doing, leaning back on her arms and letting out a deep breath.

“Something on your mind?”

“Tiptree,” said Kaidan, shifting in his seat.  “Joker wants us to go.  We’ve gotten word that some of the mass relays are functioning again — they’re not at one hundred per cent, but as long as there isn’t much traffic through them and you’ve got the patience for some extra FTL travel, they can get you where you need to go.  I don’t think the Alliance would have a problem with it, since we could stay and help with general cleanup and recovery work.  Tiptree’s a good colony world, and Alliance brass thinks it can be rebuilt.  We could leave at any time.”  He rubbed his face, concentrating.  “I wanted to run it by you first.”

Shepard sighed.  “You know you don’t need my permission, Kaidan.  God knows I’ve taken this ship every other place in the galaxy, why not Tiptree?” 

Kaidan looked down at his hands.  “Comms are still pretty spotty.  If we go, I don’t think you’ll be able to keep your counseling sessions.  We’d probably be out of range for a few weeks, since the journey will take longer than normal.  So I wanted to know if you were ready for that.  The other option would be sending you to one of the other ships here.”

Shepard bit her lip.  She wanted to go to Tiptree for Joker’s sake, if he wanted her there.  She certainly wanted to stay on the Normandy.  It was her home, and more importantly, her people were here; the people who were one of the reasons she was trying so hard to get back to something like normal.  She could make it work. 

“I’ll be fine, Kaidan,” Shepard said firmly.  “But if we go, I want to make sure Joker even wants me there.  If he doesn’t…”

“He didn’t say anything about it to me one way or another,” said Kaidan.  “But if you want to talk to him first, I don’t see any harm in that.  Just let me know by tonight.  We’re going to receive a shipment of supplies for dealing with refugees… if we find any, and we could leave as soon as tomorrow.” 

“Thanks for letting me know, Commander Alenko.” 

Kaidan’s cheeks turned pink.  “You really don’t have to call me that, Shepard.”  

“Yeah, I do,” she said, reaching for her cane.  She worked her way up to her feet, looking steadily at Kaidan.  “Unless and until Hackett wants me back, youare the commander.  And we all need you to act like it, especially if there’s any problems on this mission.  You’ve got this down.  You need to remember that.”   

Kaidan smiled a little, ducking his head.  “All right, I get the point.  But I’m just keeping your seat warm until they hand me the Normandy SR-3.”  He stood up and nodded to her, then headed out.  “Let me know by tonight.”

“Sure thing,” she said, watching him go.  She felt tired now in a way that had nothing to do with her physical therapy.  

She had been avoiding Joker since their last conversation, or maybe he’d been avoiding her.  She wasn’t sure.  She had started eating dinner with the crew again, losing herself in familiar jokes and crappy space food and too many elbows and knees at the tables, but somehow she and Joker never wound up sitting together.  He was always on the other end of the room.  She wasn’t sure if she avoided him to avoid triggering more of her own guilt, or if it was for his sake.

But she didn’t want to go to EDI’s memorial if it would be too upsetting to Joker.  She knew he probably wouldn’t tell her flat out not to come, but she at least wanted to give him the chance to say it, if he meant it.  She began the long walk up to the cockpit.

As she rode up alone in the elevator, she shifted on her bad leg, pulling her weight off of it.  It was throbbing now more than when she started her exercises.  She wondered if it would ever really be the same.  Not that she was really the same, anyway, after Cerberus; but she had become used to the cybernetically-enhanced version of her body, and now it was broken.  She supposed she should be grateful that her other wounds had healed; she no longer winced when sitting up, and the scars were faded.  But the nerve damage to her leg still kept her leaning on this cane, and she hated it.  

The elevator opened, and Shepard emerged into the navigation area.  This was the first time she had come onto the bridge since the Crucible.  Her heart swelled, seeing the navigation console with its holographic starfield.  So many possibilities.  So many chances to help.  She pulled her gaze from it.  Traynor was at her post, busily working, but when she saw Shepard she smiled and waved to her.  “Hello Co— Shepard,” she said, trying to ignore her stumble.  “Coming up for a stroll?”

“Uh, yeah.  My morning constitutional,” Shepard cracked.  “I was actually looking for Joker.  Is he at the cockpit?” 

“Yes.  He’s been working on the navigation systems, says everything’s back online.”  She lowered her voice, looking worried.  “Mind, he’s not doing too well.  He really misses her.”   

“We all do,” said Shepard automatically.  She shook her head.  “Thanks for the heads up.  I’ll be back this way in a bit.  Kaidan told me you got the comms up as good as they’re going to be.  Nice work.”

“Thanks, Shepard.”  Traynor returned to her console, but Shepard did not miss the sidelong glance the other woman gave her. 

Shepard headed toward the cockpit, each step making her leg ache.  She wondered if this was how Joker felt all of the time.  She hoped not.

She sidled into the cockpit.  Joker was sitting in his chair, hands down at his sides.  She cleared her throat.  “Hey, Joker.”

He rotated around to face her.  “Hey, Shepard.”  He waved a hand over to the co-pilot’s chair that EDI once used.  “Want to sit down?  I think I could take you in a race now, which has gotta suck for you.”

“Very funny,” said Shepard, but she took him up on his offer, even though it felt strange to be sitting in EDI’s chair.  She wasn’t sure how to proceed with what she wanted to say, so she charged into it.  “Kaidan tells me we can leave for Tiptree tomorrow.”

“That’s the plan,” said Joker, smiling grimly.  “Should be a barrel of laughs!”

“Are you going just for EDI?” Shepard asked softly, leaning towards him.  “What happened to your family, Joker?”

Joker let out a long sigh and reached up, lifting his hat, ruffling his hair with one hand, and fixing the hat back in place.  His eyes looked puffy, and she noticed that his clothing was wrinkled.  “You remember what I told you?”

"Yeah,” Shepard said solemnly.  “Liara told me that some kids were evacuated.  She — didn’t know about your dad, or if your sister had made it out.”

Joker’s hands tightened around the armrests of his chair, just slightly.  Shepard noticed the way his knuckles tensed.  “After Sanctuary… Liara was busy with other things.  EDI did some more research.  They didn’t make it off-planet, Shepard.  And Kaidan might go on about how they’re sending us with supplies for possible refugees, but the info EDI found for me — I don’t have any fantasies about finding them.  I know they’re gone.” 

Shepard put her face in her hands, breathing out heavily.  “I’m so sorry.”  She lifted her head, fighting the tightening feeling in her chest.  “Hell, Joker, why didn’t you say anything?  If you knew?”

“I didn’t want to tell anyone,” he said, his words coming out in a jumbled rush.  He avoided looking at her eyes, keeping his gaze fixed on some point above her head.  “Didn’t want people worrying about who was flying their ship, had to stay focused.  I got us through it, didn’t I?”

“Yeah, you did,” she agreed.  She had been so intent on the mission, so worried about the Reapers, that she had failed to notice that Joker was having any problems.  It had stunned her when he first told her about Tiptree, and it stunned her now to realize he’d lost his family.  At least then he had had EDI to talk to about it… and now she was gone.

“So it’s not just that I want to say goodbye to EDI,” Joker said.  “It’s Dad and Gunny, too.”

Shepard looked at him in concern.  He was a fellow soldier, but she didn’t know how much he’d seen personally.  It was one thing to see video of corpses burning on Eden Prime, or the reports of everything they’d been through, but she wasn’t sure how he would handle seeing his own home that way in person… and knowing that his family had died there.  “But you know it’ll be a… graveyard, Joker.  Is that what you want your last memory of your home to be?  We could wait, until there’s been a chance for recovery.  They’ll try to rebuild." 

“I feel like I owe it to them to go,” he said flatly.  “Look, I’m not stupid, Shepard.  I know the place is gonna be shredded.  But maybe I could just find our farm.  If they’re there… I can put them to rest.  If they’re not… at least I know I came back and said goodbye the right way.”

“And EDI?”

He hesitated, exhaling through his half-parted lips.  “I can’t imagine what it was like for you to be up there, with those choices.  So I don’t know what I would have done.  I — I loved EDI, all right, and I think she loved me.  And losing her after everything else… it’s been fucking hard.”  He pulled the brim of his cap down over his face, hiding his eyes.  “But the galaxy’s still here, Earth is saved, and the Reapers are gone.  I guess it reminds me of Virmire.  I was glad I didn’t have to choose then, either.” 

“I’m sorry,” Shepard said again.  The words sounded hollow in her own ears.  She wished she knew something better to say, something that would make the things that had happened bearable for everyone. 

“Thanks,” said Joker.  He fell quiet, and Shepard looked at her boots. 

“If you want me to stay behind for this one, I can,” she said.  “I’d understand.  If you don’t want me there.”

For a moment, Joker remained silent.  Haltingly he said, “I’ve been thinking about it.  And if you’d asked her, she would have understood.  So I think I understand, too.  You were one of her friends, Shepard.  I think that means you get to say goodbye.  After all, it’s not like someone’s written a book on how to cope with the loss of your robot girlfriend when your commander wipes out all synthetic life to save the universe, so I’m just making this up as I go.  Hope that’s okay.” 

Shepard smiled weakly.  “More than okay.”  She got to her feet, steadying herself.  “So.  Heading out for Tiptree tomorrow, then.”

“You got it.”  Joker turned back to the flight console.  “It’s gonna fucking suck, but I gotta do it." 

“I know.”

“Thanks for coming by, Shepard.”

She left, heading past the navigation console, where Kaidan was consulting with Traynor.  “It’ll be good to see Tiptree,” she said, nodding to him.  “I’ll be right there with you.”

“Glad to hear it, Shepard.”  Kaidan smiled slightly at her.  She headed to the elevator, and went to her quarters as quickly as she could, where she gingerly settled down on the bed.

She looked at the stars, the ships, the thin sliver of Earth visible through the window.  Tomorrow they would be leaving, moving away from this place, from the stasis she had been in.  Would getting out to the real world be better, or worse?  She hoped for Joker’s sake it would be better, but she honestly didn’t know.

She looked at the stars, and the depths of the darkness between them.  She looked a long time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Since my Shepard never figured out in-game that the Hilary Aeian T’Goni killed was Joker’s sister and OW FUCK THE ANGST when I found this out later, I don’t think I’ll explicitly mention it, but I may toss in a few oblique references to it when they get to Tiptree. So I just headcanoned that EDI managed to find out that Hilary died. UGH I still can’t believe Bioware did that to Joker’s sister, what the hell, how horrible can you get?


	21. Memento Mori

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shepard tries to deal with what she's done to the geth.

Garrus watched the way Shepard moved through her exercises, her short human form bending, stretching, flexing, reaching.  He could see the stiffness on the left side, the weakness that persisted despite Shepard’s best efforts.  The sight made him feel tense, his own muscles responding in sympathy.  He knew it would be temporary; once people began to live life more normally again, medical supply companies would start churning out cybernetics for war injuries by the millions.  Dr. Chakwas had said she knew just the implants for Shepard, it was only a matter of obtaining them with ruptured supply lines.  

But it still made him ache to watch the way she struggled now. 

She was on a schedule of three sets of exercises per day, and he saw the determination in her.  She varied the settings for each round of exercises, telling him that it helped keep her fresh.  Morning was the starboard lounge.  Midday, down by the gym with James and Steve giving encouragement.  Her evening exercises she did here in her cabin, often with him nearby reading or dozing.  

Tonight she seemed more fierce than normal, sweating as she leaned into another stretch.  She let out a grunt as she extended her leg fully.  

“Everything all right?” said Garrus.   

“Sure.  Just staying sharp.  As much as I can with this leg.” 

“Looks like you’re doing a good job,” he said, trying to encourage her.  “I think you’re getting some of your old flexibility back.”

She ignored the joke he’d meant it as.  Instead she huffed, blowing a few strands of uneven hair out of her eyes.  “I feel useless.”

“Why?”

“Remember how eager you were after  _you_ got half blown up, to tell me that you were ready for active duty?” she asked.  “Well, it bugs the hell out of me that I can’t say the same.” 

Garrus set down his datapad, leaning forward in his chair.  “Fair enough,” he said, tilting his head as he looked at her.  “But you’re lucky to be alive at all." 

“I guess,” she said, a note of bitterness in her voice.  She scowled at him.  

“Come on, what’s bothering you?” Garrus asked.  He slid down out of his chair to sit on the floor with her.  “Clearly something’s on your mind.”

“We’re going to Tiptree tomorrow,” said Shepard.  Garrus nodded.  He’d seen the communication from Kaidan, heard the rest of the crew talking about how good it would be to be back in flight again.  “It’ll be at least a week or two away from Dr. Harris, since Samantha doesn’t think the comms will hold.  I’m not nervous, not exactly -- but it’s got me on edge.  That, and thinking about what will happen when we get there.” 

“You mean the memorial for EDI?  Or the fun and excitement of visiting a human colony that’s sure to be nothing but rubble and dead Reaper forces?”

“Oh, Garrus,” she sighed, rolling her eyes.  “You always look at the bright side of things.”  She reached out for the towel lying next to her, and mopped her forehead with it.  “Joker’s family didn’t make it out.  The memorial’s for them, too.”

Garrus bowed his head.  He had felt powerless against the panic he had felt trying to get through to Palaven, whispered prayers to spirits he had never really believed in, that wave of relief when he’d realized Dad and Solana had made it out in time.  All of the dread and fear he’d felt when thinking the worst came welling up again, an echo of those sleepless weeks.  He imagined instead getting confirmation that they’d joined the list of casualties.  “Damn it,” he said, the sentiment seeming inadequate for such a situation.  

“Because the galaxy needed more shitty things in it,” Shepard said.  She looked down at the rumpled towel in her hands, absentmindedly twisting it.  “Well, at least it’ll be good to put EDI to rest.  I don’t know what sort of memorial the geth would have, though, or who would hold it.  I doubt the quarians would… Tali regrets their loss now, but as you can imagine, there’s still a lot of mixed feelings there.”

“Sure,” said Garrus.  He reached out to her, running his hand down her arm, then pulling back.  “If you think it would help you, maybe you should do some kind of ceremony for them yourself.”

Shepard glanced past him, looking up at her display cases of ship models.  He saw her gaze linger on the geth cruiser tucked away in the corner.  “It’s not a bad idea,” she said quietly.  “Dr. Harris recommended something similar.  Humans, we tend to need closure to start to move past things.”

“Then you should do it.”

She crawled next to him, leaning heavily on her right side as she did so.  She kissed him, her lips soft against his mouth, and he closed his eyes.  “Love you, Garrus,” she said.  “I think… I’d like to try it.  But I would rather be alone.”   

He hesitated, looking at her.  She had been getting better every day.  He could see it in her eyes, which often held some of their old fire, their old spark.  The layer of deadness to them that he’d seen those first few days was rare, now.  She sounded more normal, and when she didn’t, she usually showed anger or bitterness instead of that lost, gray despair.  He could handle angry.  He couldn’t handle empty.   

But part of him still felt tendrils of fear uncurling in the pit of his stomach every time she wanted to be alone.  She still had no access to weapons save her own biotics, and there had not been another incident like the night in the med-bay.  He felt ashamed of his own fear, as if he was unable to trust her again; and yet it was how he felt.

“I should get back to calibrations, anyway,” said Garrus.  “Got to make sure we’re spaceworthy again.”  He kissed her cheek, then got to his feet.  “I’ll be there to tuck you in,” he joked, but he hoped she could not read his voice to understand the fear beneath his words. 

*** 

Shepard sat at her desk, turning over the geth cruiser ship in her hands.  She remembered the deadliness of their attacks back when they had thought that Saren was the only threat; she remembered that moment of stunned surprise in the belly of a dead Reaper when she had heard that metallic voice call out “Shepard-Commander.”  Those days when she had walked through the AI core to speak with a creature of metal and wire, servos and hydraulics, seemed a galaxy beyond her.  No, not a creature; a person.  Legion may have referred to itself as a platform -- she still had to fight herself to not say he when thinking of that geth -- but she had thought of it as a person for a long time now.

The loss of a person was something that she could handle, though admittedly as the numbers of the lost stacked higher, the harder it had become.  But it was something that was within the normal scope and bounds of human grief.  Humans grew up expecting to lose people, and to lose them often, given their lifespans compared to a krogan or an asari.  It was buried deep in the psyche of every human, what it was to mourn.  There was a process to it, a timeline.  Grief usually did not ensnare a human mind forever.

The human psyche never had to deal with the loss of an entire sentient race, however.

Shepard thought about that bar that Garrus had talked about.  Would geth go to a place like that, if it existed at all?  Was sentience preserved in some fashion, or was it lost forever, never to be regained?  Shepard had never been much of a believer in an afterlife, or in the engineer of an afterlife.  Clearly after the Reaper War and the discovery of the Leviathan it was apparent that there were forces in the universe far greater than normal races could understand.  Could there be some force out there like a god, stewarding those beings that had disappeared? 

She rather doubted it.  All she had to go on was the feeling in her gut, the one that told her the geth were only cold and dead now.   _What did we do wrong?_  

Her hands trembled, holding the ship.  The choice had been made.  And despite that night, she was choosing to live with it.  Now, she had to think about moving on. 

“I’m sorry,” she said, her voice cracking.  She gazed at the toy model, not sure if it was better or worse that she was not faced with actual fallen bodies of the geth.  “I’m sorry,” she said again, fighting back tears.  “It -- wasn’t fair that you were caught up in this.  Your people were not the enemy.  This unit did have a soul.  I know it.”  She closed her eyes, and she was back within the geth consensus, a shimmering world of data and knowledge, thought and memory.  It had been alien to her in a way far beyond her experience with turian, salarian, or even rachni thinking.  It had also been alive.

“The geth are gone now,” she said to the ship.  “But I promise you this; I will not let you be forgotten.  The galaxy will remember the geth.  I’ll remember.  Always.”

Her fingers gripped the ship, hard.  Shakily she set it down on the desk by the couch.  She smiled weakly at the collection of objects there.   

Growing up in space, moving from ship to ship, she had never expected much in the way of privacy or permanence.  What her mother and father did encourage was keeping small mementos that would help make any ship feel like home.  She could never have many, since they were never guaranteed much room; but the ones she had she treasured far beyond their material worth. 

She still had one of them, the toy rocket her father had given her.  It was his when he was a boy, and his grandmother’s before that.  It was made of metal and plastic, the paint long since chipped away, the tiny wheels broken after so many years.  “Grandma wanted to be an astronaut,” her father had told her.  “But we didn’t have the relays then, so she became a pilot.  But she always wanted to get out there -- into the stars, into the wider galaxy beyond.  I wanted to do the same thing.  She gave it to me when I was little.”  His hand, rough and calloused, had felt warm as he placed the little ship in her hands.  

The toy rocket was carefully preserved in a small glass case of its own.  Her mother had sent it to her, after Cerberus brought her back. 

Other keepsakes were lined up against the wall.  A metal-wrought Thessian blue rose from Liara, given to her after Ilos.  It was battered and a few of the petals had snapped off; she had found it in a snowbank among the first Normandy’s wreckage, and it had taken everything she had not to sink into the snow and weep when she saw its blue glint against the ice.  There was a little book of Tennyson’s poems, a second copy to replace the first that had been destroyed.  Her old tags were there, given to her by Liara.  There was a pearlescent seashell from Sur’kesh she had bought on the Citadel.  Petrovsky’s chessboard stood stolid and grim in one corner.  The ring EDI had given her shone under the cabin lights.   

There was the framed photo of everyone at the party, laughing together.  Another photo, this one more private; she and Garrus in the main battery.  She had borrowed Glyph to be the camera drone, despite Garrus’ protests about the sentimentality of it all and his complaints that he always looked grumpy in pictures.  But Glyph had done well.  He had caught them at the end of a moment of laughter, where the chuckles faded away into something tender and gentle.  Her throat tightened at the look on her own face.  She’d been happy.  In the middle of war and devastation, she had been happy. 

There were glimmers of that emotion now, she told herself.  It wasn’t gone entirely.  But the snatches of happiness she did see felt so few and far between that it was difficult to keep perspective.

Shepard sighed, pushing the geth ship into place along the wall.  Sometimes she became so accustomed to seeing the wall of ship models that they faded into the background and she forgot to truly notice them.  But at least once a day, she looked at the objects here on the desk.  Every day, she remembered home and history, love and loss.  

She would remember the geth, too.  She owed them that much.  


	22. Dinner Conversations

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> An argument over dinner reveals deeper issues.

Liara settled down at the long table, taking a seat between Garrus and Tali.  Shepard was across the table, squeezed between Steve and Javik.  Dinner was always a staggered affair on the ship, as night crew and day crew rarely intersected.  The squad specialists and those of them who did not fall under Alliance jurisdiction had taken to eating together, a pattern that had started back on the SR-1 and that Liara had been pleased to find out had carried over to the new ship.  It could be a little awkward at times, as mixed dextro and levo gatherings often were, but the meals carried a sense of home that went a long way in the cold reaches of space.  

Occasionally Liara, used to decades of solitary field research, would find the gatherings a little too boisterous and would retire back to her own quarters.  Lately though she was simply glad to see they had all survived, and she relished the contact with the others even more than she had before.  

“Good evening, Tali,” Liara said, reaching out to pile her plate with levo rations.  It was some kind of shelf-stable pasta dish, fairly bland but serviceable regardless.  “Is the ship running well with the damage to the relays?”

“It’s been slower going than normal, of course,” said Tali, focusing on flash-irradiating the small portions of food on her plate to sterilize them.  “But that’s due more to the problems with the relays than with our ship.”  Tali could eat small bites of food through her induction port once it had been sterilized.  When she and Liara had first begun working together, Tali had described how most of the time she simply ate quarian food in paste form through her suit, but it was much more fun to be social with the rest of the crew, and mealtime was the best time for that.  She often joined the crew for dinner, taking her chances on eating food that had not been completely sterilized.  The occasional allergic response was worth the camaraderie of a shared meal, Tali said, especially when she had been used to the crowded environment of the flotilla and the constant presence of others.  

“Do you think the relays will be repaired fully?” Liara asked.  “I… would like to see Thessia again, sooner than a few hundred years from now.”

“I think so,” said Tali.  “The most recent reports I’ve heard said that the damages were mostly confined to structural support, but the Reaper tech inside was scarcely damaged.  I think if they have lasted this long, they will last a little longer.  You’ll see Thessia, and I’ll see Rannoch, again.”

Liara took a bite of her food, pulling a displeased face.  It tasted as bland as it looked.  What she wouldn’t give for sushi right now.  

She glanced over at Garrus.  “How is the dextro food tonight, Garrus?  This pasta leaves several things to be desired.  Flavor, chiefly, but also texture, smell, and appearance.”  She lifted up her fork, several noodles falling limply to the plate as she did so.

“No bacon,” said Garrus in a glum voice, shaking his head.  “There was a package of it Shepard was going to bring back to the ship, but last I heard it had been blown up on the Citadel.  So it’s back to nutrient bars and crappy imitation meat.  No offense, Tali, but the real stuff is vastly superior.”

“None taken,” said Tali cheerfully.  “We only eat plant-based foods on the flotilla due to the limited energy requirements of plants as compared to animals.  But I’d join you in eating bacon any day.”

“Of course, it would pale in comparison to eating turian or quarian,” said Javik slyly from across the table.  He speared at his limp pasta with his fork, pushing aside the dextro imitation meat.  It was still baffling to Liara that he could ingest both types of food with no ill effects.  “It is upsetting to me that sentient life is somehow exempt from being eaten in this cycle.  So much flavor is missed due to these arbitrary restrictions.”

“Oh, go on then,” said Shepard, fixing him with a narrowed eye.  “What does parboiled human taste like, anyway?”

Javik waved his hands in front of him.  “Why would you parboil a human?  That is ghastly.  Humans take much better to frying.  The fat in the skin crisps delightfully.”

“Really?  Do we have to do this now?” groaned Steve, pushing his plate away.  “Look, Javik, it’s great and all that you survived fifty thousand years to come and hang out with us at the dinner table, but more than a few things have changed since your cycle.  Thank goodness for that, by the way.”

“You still have not given me an answer yet, Javik,” said Liara lightly.  “Will you help me write that book on Prothean customs and society?”  For a moment she felt as eager as she had as a child, when Benezia had taken her on her first visit to a Prothean dig site.  If she could bring the Protheans to life, it would be an affirmation of all that she had held dear and meaningful.  Even after the revelations of the past few years she could not completely release her interest in the ancient race, and she felt more determined than ever to unearth new information about them.  Of course, she had a feeling it would be easier if Javik actually cared to help her.

“I have my own plans for the future,” said Javik darkly.  “The Co--  Shepard knows of what I speak.  I will not be here to write any books with you.”  Liara saw the way he stumbled, still wanting to call Shepard Commander.  Liara felt as if she had caught half the crew doing the same in the past few days.  It simply did not feel right to be on the Normandy without Shepard at the helm, though Kaidan was doing well.

Shepard looked down into her glass of water, swirling it around with one scarred hand.  “I don’t think your plan is such a good idea, Javik.”

The Prothean sat back and considered her with a calm look on his face.  “Why?  Because you were unable to do the same when you desired it?”

Shepard’s head whipped upwards, and she stared at Javik with a ferocity that Liara usually saw out on the battlefield.  Liara sensed more than saw Garrus tensing beside her.  

"Leave it alone, Javik," said Garrus warningly.

Javik merely shrugged.  "It was a simple question.  I meant no offense.  I had spoken to her about what was contained in the memory shard I brought on board this ship.  It holds dark memories that I intend to rectify with my own death.  I only wanted to know how it was that Shepard could tell me suicide was a poor choice, given her own actions."

Liara groaned.  "Javik, I thought Protheans were supposed to be able to sense things," she said.  "Perhaps your abilities have stagnated after your long stasis, but you should be able to sense that this is a very delicate topic."  She glared at him, and for not the first time she wished that a different Prothean, any Prothean, could have been reawakened instead of Javik.

"Is this a conversation you really want to be having?" Shepard asked, the muscles along her jaw tightening.  "Fine, maybe I'm not the best person to be giving a pep talk on why life's worth living right now.  Am I proud of that?  No.  I didn't want to live anymore, but I didn't go through with it.  If you think that's -- cowardly, or lacking honor, or whatever the hell else you want to say about it -- I don't fucking care," she spat.

"On the contrary, it appears you care a great deal," said Javik mildly.

Several things happened nearly at once.  Shepard crackled with biotic energy, a nova hit ready at her fingertips.  Garrus jumped to his feet, knocking over his plate and drink into Liara's lap.  Liara gasped with surprise and half the table either shouted or leapt out of their chairs.  Tali shouted at Shepard to stop.

Shepard let her biotics dissipate, and she sank back against her chair, looking around at everyone.  "Sorry," she said.  Ignoring Javik she reached for her cane and used it to leverage herself back to her feet.  "I'm not hungry anyway."  She loped away, her back hunched as she made her way towards the starboard lounge.

Liara sighed, grabbing a napkin and brushing off the food Garrus had spilled.

"I'm sorry, Liara," said Garrus.  "Turians, you know, we're graceful creatures."  He took her dirty napkin and cleaned up the area on the table.

Javik stood up, taking his plate to the sink.  "I do not know what all the excitement is about," he remarked, cleaning his utensils.  "I will take my leave now."

Tali turned to Liara.  "There's never a dull moment on this ship, is there?  If it isn't dodging Reapers it's avoiding a full-fledged food fight."

Steve shook his head.  "Gotta say, a biotic food fight would be something to see.  Of course, I'd want to see it from behind a blast door or from an observation deck, but still, it'd be interesting."

Liara wished she had never brought up the subject of the book to Javik.  She had talked with Shepard before after Javik spoke to the Commander, but Shepard had only mentioned that Javik was still mourning the loss of his men, "in his own way."  She supposed that suicide for a vengeful Prothean could be classified as mourning.  It disquieted her that Shepard had not spoken more plainly that day; perhaps subconsciously Shepard had already been harboring self-injurious thoughts, even before the assault on Earth.  It was apparent that even though Shepard no longer appeared to be a risk to herself, she still had many unresolved emotions concerning the subject.  She wasn't sure which was stranger; the Prothean's inclination to discuss his own impending death with his usual brazenness, or Shepard's anger and shame on the same topic.  It was not like her to respond so violently to a conversation, especially given that Javik had not seemed particularly intent on trying to upset Shepard.

Liara spent the rest of the evening poring over her monitors, using Glyph to collate data from the remaining communication arrays they could find still functional.  A good number of the ones the ship was passing by proved to still be sending and receiving data, a fact that should have cheered her.  Instead, she felt only sadness at the way the evening had gone.  At this rate, the galaxy would remain just as mystified about the Protheans as ever they had been, and Shepard would still be seething with unresolved guilt.

She couldn't concentrate.  Admitting defeat, she decided to take a walk around the ship and stretch her legs; it was better than staring at the wall of monitors, with Glyph chirruping in the background about new bits of data he'd recovered.

She found herself down on the engineering deck, thinking vaguely of talking to Tali.  Instead she heard a raised voice from Javik's headquarters; it was Shepard, talking heatedly.  Liara hurried in, hoping to stop one of them from blasting the other with their biotics.  If nothing else she could lock them in a stasis until they had cooled off.

Javik and Shepard were glaring at each other, standing by the memory shard Javik had protected so fiercely.  "Dr. T'soni," said Javik.  "Would you please explain to the human that she has taken unreasonable offense to our conversation tonight?"  He waved a hand at Shepard, who was clenching the handle of her cane so hard Liara could see her knuckles whiten.

"Liara, would you please tell this Prothean that if he keeps this up, I’ll want him off my ship?" said Shepard curtly.  

"But it is no longer your ship, which I think is part of the problem," said Javik.

"Stop for a moment," Liara said, flinging up her hands and stepping between the two of them.  They looked slightly blurry, wreathed in the mist that left the room so humid.  "Javik, you can see that this line of inquiry is unhelpful, can you not?  And Shepard, can't you see that he is merely asking you questions -- not trying to judge you?"  

"The problem, as I see it, is this," said Javik.  "The former Commander is frustrated at her demotion, and harbors a great guilt for destroying the synthetics, despite it being the wisest course of action.  She is also ashamed of her desire to end herself, and envious that I may hold the same thoughts without the slightest sense of dismay.  It is simply the appropriate thing to do, to lay myself down at the end of this long and miserable cycle."

"I think that there are other options besides living in the past," said Liara cautiously.  "Or dying for it, for that matter.  If every asari stayed living in the past we would have died out as a species long ago.  The trick is to keep moving.  We hold the past in abeyance, and honor those who came before, but not at the expense of our own future contributions."

Shepard looked down at her boots, not meeting their eyes.  “Look, Javik, I don’t want you using me as some kind of -- inspiration -- for your own suicidal thoughts.  And what goes on in my head is none of your business.”

“The former Commander believes her crew to have lost faith in her, and that is truly why she is upset,” said Javik.  He stepped aside, walking up to the table that held the memory shard.  “I do not think that is something that you need to fear, Shepard,” he said.  “They have followed you into hell, and if you asked it again of them, again they would follow.”

“He’s right, Shepard,” said Liara softly.  

For a moment it looked as if Shepard was going to argue.  Then she nodded.  “Thank you.”  She lifted one hand to rub the skin between her eyes, a gesture Liara recognized as indicating stress, worry, anxiety.  “I don’t really want you to leave, Javik.  Not this ship.  Not this galaxy.  There’s more to do out there, and it would be a waste if we lost you.”

Javik considered this.  “Perhaps you are right.  There is still much to learn, and explore, and shoot in this galaxy.”  He looked at Liara, blinking his many eyes.  “If you still desire to write your book, I will aid you.  But my name is to come first on the cover.”

Liara laughed.  “That depends on how much you contribute.  Thank you, Javik.  Let’s meet tomorrow to start, since we’ll have some time before we reach Tiptree.”

Javik nodded, and Shepard turned to go.  Before she could leave, though, Javik extended his hand.  “I apologize that we misunderstood each other tonight,” he said.  “I will stay on this ship as long as I am needed.”

Shepard smiled, though the action was tired. She thrust out her hand, and shook Javik’s heartily.  “I’m sorry I tried to punch a hole through your head.  I’d be glad to have you stay as long as you’d like.”

Shepard and Liara left Javik’s quarters.  “Shepard, are you all right?” asked Liara as they waited for the elevator.

“I’m just tired,” said Shepard.  “And going a little stir-crazy.  I’m not used to being stuck on-ship for so long.  Normally I’d go out and shoot something, but that’s off-limits for now.”  She shrugged.  “That’s all.”

“Are you sure?” said Liara.  The elevator opened, and they entered.  She searched Shepard’s face.  The human’s eyes, though less shadowed that they had been, still had deep circles beneath them.  The new scars had largely faded.  She looked a little thinner in the cheeks than she normally did; Liara was unsure if she wasn’t eating well, or if it was simply the lack of exercise and activity to which she had been subjected.  Her hair was growing unevenly, falling haphazardly into her eyes.  Shepard still had not had it properly cut after part of it had been burned away.  “If there’s more to it than simply being tired, I am always here if you wish to talk.”

“I know,” said Shepard, and this time her smile was much easier, reaching her eyes.  “It’s been good to have you back, Liara.”

The elevator stopped at Liara’s floor.  “It’s been good to be back, Shepard,” she said.  “Goodnight.”  But she didn’t sleep.  Instead she thought of Protheans and fallen empires, Reapers and devastated worlds, Shepard’s new scars and her new limp.  She did not fall asleep for hours, and when she did sleep, it was uneasy and dreamless.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the delay between chapters. I was out of town at a veterinary conference and focusing on learning stuff! Didn't leave much time for fanfiction, alas!


	23. Above the Fray

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For a natural leader, following can be painful.

Shepard stood in the cockpit with Joker, Garrus at her side.  She could not help the itchy, crawling sensation deep in her hands and feet.  It wasn’t right, standing up here with a squad on the ground; she was supposed to be down there with them, dammit, not here safe in the ship.  It reminded her of kicking her heels in an Alliance facility on Earth, straining to see the stars through her window at night.  The light pollution from the city had bleached the night sky, wiping it of star and nebula.  She had been so useless in those months.  She had hated leaving Earth to muster support for the fleet, but she had been secretly grateful to be back in action, a new system every day, back on the attack.  She was back on her ship, so that was an improvement; but not leading the ground squad made her chafe more than she had imagined it would.  

They had reached Tiptree a few hours ago, several days ahead of schedule.  More of the relays had been functional than expected, though they had played it safe and taken only short hops.  Kaidan was down on the ground with James and Tali, the three of them searching for any evidence of remaining enemy forces.  The reports they had received from Earth stated that Reaper forces collapsed where they stood, but they wanted to verify that the site was clear before bringing down the rest of the crew to search for survivors, or to start the long hard work of cleanup and disposal.

Shepard’s stomach twisted with every transmission between Kaidan and Joker.  The idea of being a non-combatant was sickening.  _I can still fight!_  her brain insisted.  But her cane and her shaking hands said otherwise, and facing the truth of that was something she could not bear to do.

“How do you handle it, Joker?” she said stiffly.  “Being up here while things are happening down below?”

“Well, it was never really an option for me to be a foot soldier,” Joker said, shrugging.  “That whole ‘bones snapping in a light breeze’ issue.  I’m not thrilled about it, but I’m used to it.  I guess you’ve never had to stay behind though, have you?”

“Never,” said Garrus.  “She hogged every mission.”  The warmth in his voice washed over her, and she tried to smile at the joke.  

“I had to make sure this guy wouldn’t take all the credit,” Shepard said, leaning against Garrus.  He slipped his arm around her for just a second, a quick embrace that was not missed by Joker.

“Do you two need to get a room?” asked Joker.  He turned back to his console, which was crackling with Kaidan’s voice.

“We’ve got a visual on the house at the coordinates you gave us, Joker,” said Kaidan.  There was a pause.  “I’m sorry, but nothing is standing.  There’s some rubble, and some dead Reaper ground troops, but we haven’t seen any humans, living or dead.”

“Well, I can’t say I’m surprised,” said Joker, ducking his head.  “We all knew the Reapers hit it hard.  Is it clear for me to land?  I’d… like to take a look on my own.”

“The area’s secured, but watch out for debris.  I’ll patch you the locations of some clear sites,” said Kaidan.  “Alenko out.”  

Joker’s hands flew over the controls as he brought the ship down.  Shepard didn’t know what to say.  It had been what they were expecting, but the confirmation was still difficult to believe.  “Sorry, Joker,” said Garrus.

“Yeah.  Thanks,” said Joker curtly.  “I’ll get her landed.  If anyone wants to come out and help me look… feel free.”

Shepard and Garrus made their way back to her cabin.  Shepard knew that wearing her armor with the weakened leg was out of the question, but she at least wanted to change out of her casual clothes into her fatigues.  Dr. Chakwas hadn’t released her for duty or weapons privileges yet, but she could look a little something like a soldier again.  

Once back in her room, she opened up the wardrobe, using the cane to steady herself.  Her backup set of armor stood behind the opened panel, glinting back reflections of the overhead light.  Her chest ached at the familiar sight.  She remembered what had happened to her primary set back on Earth, with metal and synthetic mesh burning against her skin, the thick plates and greaves shearing off of her body.  She remembered how weak and unprotected she had felt, staggering to the beam, head spinning, each inhalation searing in her chest.  It was so vivid.  She swallowed, taking a deep breath, remembering what Dr. Harris had told her.  She was allowed to experience memories as they appeared, but she could not let herself dwell on them.  

She focused on what was here and now.  The walls of her cabin.  The floor of the Normandy beneath her feet.  The slight hum of her fish tank.  These things were around her now, not tangled metal and acrid steam.  Her trembling hands reached out and pulled out her fatigues, instead of the armor.

Garrus fidgeted with the collar on his own armor as she undressed.  She hoped he had not witnessed her slipping into memory.  “I hadn’t thought about how difficult it would be for you to not be on the ground, Shepard.”

“I had,” she said, leaning against the wall as she slid her legs into the thick clothing, then straightening up to button the outfit.  She had gotten rather good at mostly balancing on her good leg, but she still tired easily for simple tasks like getting dressed.  “I didn’t like not being able to be down there.”

“You’re a doer, I know,” said Garrus, looking at the fish chasing each other around the tank.  He shifted from side to side.  “You realize it’s only temporary.  You’ll be out there as soon as they get your leg back into shape.” 

“Will I, though?” she said sharply.  “Dr. Chakwas still isn’t sure how long it will take to find some new implants for my leg.  And it isn’t only that.  I don’t know when they’re going to take me off of psych restriction.  Dr. Chakwas wants to wait until I can meet with Dr. Harris again and see how I’ve been doing without her.”  She sat down on the edge of the bed, fumbling for her boots.  

She no longer stood at the precipice, wanting to end her own life.  But there was still a howling void in her thoughts, full of regrets, shame, frustration.  If she could at least be back there fighting, like she had done after Akuze, maybe she would not have felt so disoriented.  Instead she was here in the Normandy, pacing back and forth, trying to hide from Garrus the number of times she woke up in the night.  Sometimes it was the old nightmare in the forest; sometimes it was vague and disquieting scenes that were not frightening by themselves, but only upon waking did she realize that they made her afraid.  Sometimes it was simply that she could not sleep at all, and she willed herself to be silent and motionless beside Garrus, not wanting to worry him more than she already did.   

She could see it in him, now, the way he seemed stiff and distant from her.  She knew it was in response to the way that she was holding back; he was only reflecting the coldness she projected.  She wished she was not afraid to tell him everything that bothered her, but at the same time, she hated how much she weighed him down.  She was so heavy, it seemed; and she was surprised he hid the strain as well as he did.

Garrus sat down beside her.  She noticed the shadows under his eyes, a deeper black than normal.  He reached out, brushing her hair back behind her ear, keeping it out of her face.  She closed her eyes against his gloved touch, exhaling. 

“You’ll get there, Shepard,” he said.  “I like to think I know you pretty damn well.  And this is something you’ll come back from.”  

She shivered, hearing the vehemence in his voice.  She knew he wanted to believe that she could become something like her old self once again.  Maybe it even went beyond wanting, and he did believe it.  She saw him again, a young C-Sec officer disillusioned with bureaucracy, burning with the need to make a difference.  Garrus had always needed something in which to believe.  Justice.  Vengeance.  Saving the galaxy.  Or, a human woman who did what she could and hoped it would be enough.  Yet she could not feel the weight of his convictions.  The idea of disappointing him, as so many had in his life… it was a bitter thing to contemplate.

“You’re just saying that,” she said as she pulled on her boots.  It was a phrase she’d said to him a thousand times in jest, after he’d said that he loved her, or told her how pretty she was.  Any number of times she had said it, and she had been gently self-deprecating.  This time, her voice held none of that bantering tone; this time she meant it, and the realization made her feel dull and cold. 

Garrus fell quiet, as if there was nothing else that he could think of to say.  Shepard finished buckling her boots, then reached for her cane and stood.  She turned to face him. 

“How do I look?” she said.  She patted down the front of her fatigues.  They were only fabric, with none of the comforting weight and heft of her armor.  There was nothing between her and a killing blow.  

Garrus looked up at her, his head tilted slightly to one side, his expression inscrutable.  “You look beautiful,” he said, his voice husky with emotion.  Before she could say anything, he got to his feet.  “Come on.  Time to go planetside.”


	24. Groundwork

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Moreau residence is visited.

Garrus stood on the hillside, crushing the grass beneath his feet.  He surveyed the land before him, a familiar sinking feeling palpable in his chest.  Part of him was glad that he had only seen Menae burning with his own eyes, instead of being on the ground while Palaven took heavy fire.  The battle here in this human colony had been decided months ago, so the smells of the settlement were not the fresh scents of active fighting: blood, smoke, spent thermal clips.  Instead there were different odors on the air that spoke to abandonment and loss.  He could smell ruin, in the shattered walls of buildings, and he could smell new plant growth, already happening on some of the collapsed houses.  It was the growing season, but there were none here now to tend the fields.

He breathed in the breeze blowing past him.  It was good to be off the ship.  He had gotten used to life on the Normandy, constantly exploring new places every few days, but always returning to the ship.  He did not find the ship to be claustrophobic, but there was still something to be said for a yellow sun in a blue sky, and the smell of green.  

He recoiled from a sudden scent of something bitter and metallic.  He recognized that from Tuchanka, from Rannoch, Thessia, Earth.  There was Reaper tech ahead.  

Garrus already knew that, as Joker had thoroughly scanned the area of his family’s township and pointed out the collapsed forms of two of the small Reapers on the edge of the settlement.  Kaidan had warned them not to approach, as they all knew the risks of indoctrination even from inert and damaged Reapers.  Until extensive studies had been done it would be impossible to know if Shepard’s choice with the Crucible had eliminated the Reapers’ inherent mind-warping abilities.

He turned to walk back down the hill, the familiar weight of his Black Widow shifting with every step.  He couldn’t help but bring it, even though he knew he was unlikely to use it.  Shepard had been so cute, months ago, calling him down to the cargo bay and telling him she had something for him.  “Close your eyes,” she had said playfully, and he had, wondering what she was doing.  He had cracked open one eye to see her pulling a weapon out of the locker, then hurriedly snapped his eye shut as he heard her walk up to him.  “Hold out your hands,” she said, trying to stifle her excitement and failing.  When he did she pressed heavy, cold metal into his hands, and he opened his eyes to see the gleaming new sniper rifle.

“Shepard, these aren’t cheap —” he had tried protesting, and she just laughed.

“Who cares?  I just like the way it looks on you,” she’d teased before kissing him.

The memory was a good one.  Shepard, so excited to give him something, to see him happy.  He missed that Shepard desperately.  He would never give up on her; he never had, he never would.  But Garrus honestly didn’t know where to go from here.  Shepard had always led them all onward, and he had been content to follow her passion and drive.  Now she was the one who needed direction.  He saw the way she leaned on him, but also the way that she tried not to; as if she felt embarrassed that she needed help at all.

He looked out ahead as he made his way down the hill.  Shepard was working with Kaidan, the two of them using their biotics to lift debris out of the way to let Tali, Cortez, and Traynor search the rubble.  Liara and Javik worked with James, Dr. Chakwas, and Joker a little further down the valley.  Garrus jogged down to meet the first group.

Shepard and Kaidan set down a huge twisted sheet of metal that appeared to have been the side of a home.  Cortez, Tali and Traynor stepped forward, scanning the field of smaller debris that had been trapped beneath the metal, their omni-tools flickering.  Kaidan, Garrus and Shepard joined them.

Mementoes crunched beneath their boots.  Garrus saw tattered clothing, old-fashioned paper books, kitchen dishes.  The layer of dirt and grime over everything was already substantial, helped by Tiptree’s stormy spring.  They clambered over the pile of rubble, Shepard carefully tapping with her cane to search for areas of instability.  The group finished the search of this square empty-handed, not a single human alive or dead detectable.  The Reapers had been too efficient here.

The afternoon wore on with the crew speaking little.  Between the biotics and the scanners they effectively searched the most populated region of the township, but always finding nothing but the objects and the detritus left behind by the people who had once lived here.  There were a few buildings that still remained standing, but those that did stand were heavily damaged.  

The team made their way to the coordinates of Joker’s home, silent all the way.  Shepard was flagging a few steps behind the rest of the group, and Garrus dropped back a little to walk next to her, though he tried not to draw attention to the fact that he was slowing down for her.  Her face was pained, with lines forming between her brows and in the set of her cheeks.  Her forehead shone with sweat, despite the fact the day was cool.  He wondered if she should be out here doing this work with the rest of them.  She seemed frail to him, sometimes, and though he knew she hated being seen that way he could not help but see the way she winced with each step.

They reached the house, or what was left of it.  Garrus could see the remnants of fruit-bearing trees in an orchard beyond the house, but the trees’ thin trunks were snapped, their branches bare.  Fences that might once have kept out pests were torn down, with tangled chunks of debris twining around the trunks of some of the trees.  The house was no better off.  A few walls stood, but the roof had collapsed, and there was clear evidence of water damage and mold growing on most of the visible surfaces.  Scorch marks painted the sides of the walls that remained standing.  Miraculously a window was still intact, though the front door was a splintered mess. 

Joker stood staring at the ruins, his back bowed.  Garrus had never seen him walk so much before; he hoped Joker was not injuring himself.

“You all right?” Kaidan asked in a low voice.

Joker’s face was grim and cold, his eyes downcast beneath his hat.  “Hell no, Commander.”  He sniffed loudly, wiping at his face.  “But I have to know.  Come on.  Help me look for… something.  Anything.”

Quietly they began to move through the rubble.  Garrus seemed to be in what had once been a study.  There were wrecked pieces of holoscreen and a smashed computer console.  He knelt down, pulling at a datapad from beneath a chunk of prefabricated concrete wall.  The datapad seemed intact, despite a chipped corner and cracked backing.  Garrus flicked it on.  Slowly, as if the software had been damaged, a picture materialized on the screen.   

Garrus sighed.  It was a picture of four humans; a man and woman with pale skin, plain clothes, and broad smiles, and two younger humans.  The girl looked up at him with bright eyes, freckles spangling her cheeks.  The young man was clearly a clean-shaven Joker in what appeared to be his first Alliance uniform, looking proud and almost solemn as he stood leaning upon sleek metal crutches.  “Hell,” Garrus said softly.  He stood up, looking for Joker.

He found the man sitting in a chair that was still partially functional, with only the backing damaged.  Fallen walls around him rose to no more than two or three feet tall.  Joker had pulled his cap down over his face, and sat with his arms wrapped around a battered rectangular box.  Its sides were too dirty to read what it contained.   

“Joker?” Garrus said.  Joker pushed his cap up, looking over at Garrus.  Tears streaked his cheeks.  

“Hey, Garrus,” he said thickly.  “What’d you find?”  He gestured to the box in his lap.  “This was my sister’s.  I got it for her birthday last year.”  He held it up, and Garrus could see that despite the dirt the box was still sealed.  “She tried to keep it in mint condition.  Said it’d be worth something one day.”  He laughed, but it was a ragged sound.  “What a dork she was.”  He smiled, and wiped at his eyes.

“Thought you might want to keep this,” said Garrus, unsure of what to say.  He held out the datapad, and Joker reached for it, exhaling heavily as he saw the picture.

“I looked like a real asshole, didn’t I?  Mom and Dad were proud, though,” he said.  “See, here’s Mom — she passed away a year after that — and Dad, and Gunny.”  He was quiet for a moment, staring at the photo.  “Thanks, Garrus.”

“Joker, I’m sorry,” said Garrus.  “I wish we could have found something different.” 

Joker shook his head.  “I knew it was gonna be like this.  I knew it.  It’s just… if it was your family, you’d want to know for sure too, right?”

Garrus thought back to the house on Palaven.  It had been empty enough coming back to it, after Mom died.  All the money and research Garrus could muster, and it wasn’t enough.  She had still slipped away.  He and Dad and Solana had moved around the familiar rooms like stars in orbit, never coming in contact with each other; his mother was the one who brought them all together, and without her, they were three strangers occupying the same space.  At least, it was how it had seemed before the war.  

After it, Garrus had spent long nights awake in Shepard’s cabin while she slept beside him, compulsively checking his omni-tool for messages.  He could not imagine walking among shattered buildings on Palaven, seeing Solana’s old musical instruments snapped in half, or his father’s C-Sec commendations smashed in little pieces, or Mom’s favorite paintings burned and ruined.

“Yes,” said Garrus.  “I’d want to know.”

Joker turned the datapad off, setting it on top of the box balanced on his knees.  “Now I know.”  He looked out at the remains of the orchard.  “I think EDI would have liked to see the trees, you know, before the Reapers.  They would get these blossoms in the spring that smelled fantastic.  And real, not like the cherry blossoms on the Presidium.  I always hated those stupid trees.  They were just an imitation, like everything about that place.”   

“They always made me sneeze, actually,” Garrus said.  Joker laughed.

“EDI was curious about that kind of stuff, though, even the fake trees.  She was interested in things that grew.  I liked that about her.  She could’ve been our robot overlord.  But she just wanted to learn; about humans, about everything.  I told her a lot about the farm, and she said she wanted to see it once the war was over.  But now it’s just this.”  He gestured at the wasted trees.  “Still, I mean, I guess it’s as good a place as any to bury her.  It’d almost be like she got to meet my family.” 

“I think she would’ve liked that, Joker.  I — I didn’t know her very well, I admit,” said Garrus.  He thought he saw a nice place a few hundred meters away, where the trees weren’t quite so fractured.  That could work.  Or maybe over there, past where the fence faltered.  “But she was a fighter.  A good person.”

“Yeah.  She was,” said Joker, his words trailing off.  They looked at the trees, and Garrus smelled decay, dust, mold.  Behind that was a scent of new leaves budding, and the first shy flowers of weeds out in the fields, taking advantage of the absence of farmers and pesticides.  This little colony world could live again, thrive again; he could feel it.  

But it would never be the same.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not many more chapters left to go at this point, though I’m not quite sure yet on the final count. Probably no more than 30. This is the longest fic I have ever written by far; most of my fic is handily under 10,000 words. It’s been a blast but I’ll be relieved to take a break from writing and start playing games again once it’s done, as I only have time enough to do one or the other! :)


	25. The Memorial

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> EDI is laid to rest.

Shepard and Garrus stood in the elevator, coming down from her quarters.  “How’s your leg?” Garrus asked.  

Shepard bit her lip.  She had hoped that it was not obvious how much she had strained it yesterday, searching through the rubble of Tiptree.  As usual, Garrus had picked up on what she was trying to hide.  “Hurts,” she said shortly.  “But I’m dealing.”

“We could stop by the med-bay,” Garrus suggested, but Shepard shook her head before he had finished the sentence.  

“No.  We’re not holding up the memorial just because of me,” she said.  “I’ve done enough.”

“Hey, Shepard,” Garrus said in a low voice, leaning down to brush a kiss against her temple.  “You can talk to me, you know.  How are you holding up?”

Shepard looked up at him.  His eyes were soft, his head tilted to that angle she had begun to think of as  _hers_ , since she so often caught him gazing at her like that.  She recognized his worry, and the way he ached for her.  She felt as if there was a leaden weight somewhere deep in the pit of her abdomen.  Seeing the settlement yesterday had been much harder than she had expected.  She hadn’t known those people, but she found she could imagine them far better than she wanted to; civilians, farmers, children, parents.  They had all fallen on this little world, just another set of casualties from the Reaper war.

Unsurprisingly, she had not slept well.  Garrus had wanted her to talk to him last night, when he saw the way she paced back and forth in the hallway from the main battery to the kitchen.  “If you don’t want to talk to me about it, you could try Liara, or Tali, or anyone,” Garrus had said, clearly frustrated by her bitter silence.  She had kissed him, and tried to tell him that she would be fine, she was only nervous about the memorial.  He had not believed her.  The night passed too slowly, with an uncomfortable silence between them.

Shepard missed the counseling sessions she had been receiving.  It was a catharsis, to speak to someone who did not know her and did not inject caring about her into their conversations.  It felt as if she could be listened to, or loved; but it was impossible for both to occur at the same time.  She wished they were closer to the Sol system, or that the comms were up.  Of course, the destructive blast that had emanated from the Citadel had damaged that too.

The elevator door slid open, and Shepard and Garrus emerged into the cargo bay.  Most of the team was already there, and they joined the group, lining up beside the hover-stretcher appropriated from the med-bay.  EDI’s mobile platform lay there, the silver eyes opened and expressionless, the face empty, arms crossed over her chest.  Joker stood in front of the stretcher in his dress blues and baseball cap, a pair of leg braces strapped on over the outside of his uniform.  Shepard remembered the way he had hobbled back into the ship last night, clutching the box of his sister’s and the photo of his family.  She felt a spasm of grief, realizing how much he must have hurt himself yesterday to the point of needing the braces that he hated.  

The last stragglers made their way into the cargo bay.  Joker watched them file in, then nodded to Traynor, Adams, and Donnelly.  The four of them took up positions by the stretcher, and put their hands on it, guiding it forward as they walked down the ramp and toward the site they had chosen yesterday.  Shepard and the others followed behind them.  

Shepard felt Garrus’ hand brushing against hers, and she gripped it fiercely as they made their way out of the ship and along a patch of untouched grass, soft and green.  They had found a good place yesterday, where a few of the orchard trees still stood, and tiny buds emerged from the edge of the branches.  The skeleton of Joker’s house stood a few hundred meters beyond, and before them was a simple hollow excavated last night by the light of the sunset.

Joker stopped just before the grave site, then looked down at EDI’s face.  The light of the morning sun reflected brightly on the curves of her cheeks and forehead.  He reached out and touched her, his hand lingering on her shoulder.  “Does anyone want to say a few words?” he asked numbly. 

Shepard looked out at her crewmates, their attention focused on the empty ground before them.  They stood huddled around the grave and the stretcher, the humans in their Alliance dress blues, the other species in their best armor.  They were all alike in their somber expressions.

Traynor cleared her throat, then briefly touched EDI’s hand.  “When I first met EDI, I thought she was the loveliest VI I had ever encountered.  I  _may_  have had an incorrigible crush on her.”  She laughed a little, the sound sweet, a blush spreading across her cheeks even as her eyes shone with tears.  “When I learned she was an AI instead,  I realized how much I respected her.  How much I liked her.  She was a person, just as real as you or I; wickedly clever, enormously intelligent, and a good friend.  I’ll miss you, EDI,” she said, and tears trickled down her face.  Traynor stepped back from EDI’s side, wiping at her eyes.

Tali shifted where she stood.  “Quarians have never been exactly friendly towards synthetics,” she said softly.  “But EDI, and Legion, they both helped me understand that intelligence is intelligence.  EDI saved our lives so many times, and I never got to really thank her.  I’m sorry she’s gone.”

Garrus squeezed Shepard’s hand, then said into the quiet, “EDI was a soldier I was honored to fight with.  She got it, what we were fighting for.  She was special.”

Shepard shivered.  Despite the bright sunlight, there was a cold breeze blowing.  It chilled her to the core.  She had always been sensitive to cold, used to growing up on climate-controlled ships.  She stood closer to Garrus, blinking rapidly.

Engineer Adams shoved his hands into his pockets.  “I’ve never worked with an AI before, and now that I have, I don’t think I could have asked for a better person to help run the ship.  EDI could do it all, and with a smile; I lost track of how many times she pulled a fast one over on me, though from what I hear, she teased Joker most of all.”  He smiled, but it was a sad one.  “The ship was better with EDI, and it feels empty now without her.”

“I know we’d have been sunk against the Collectors without EDI,” said Donnelly firmly.  “She and Joker saved the ship; and after that, I never had another doubt about her.  We all miss her.”

Shepard watched the others speaking, feeling numb.  Part of her was sad to hear the memories that everyone was sharing; part of her was worried about what she would say, when it came to her turn.  She was good at thinking on her feet, but she felt bothered by this service in a way she could not fully describe, and it made her feel unsteady.

On the other side of the grave, James rubbed his neck with one hand.  “EDI was a helluva soldier to have beside you on the battlefield.  I always knew she had my back.”

Beside him, Cortez nodded.  “I was always glad to have EDI in the shuttle.  She was a brilliant fighter, but she also had a great sense of humor.  A good combination.”

Dr. Chakwas moved next to Shepard and Garrus, her arms crossed against the cold breeze.  “I used to think that an artificial intelligence could never be anything  _but_  artificial,” she said slowly.  “But the more I came to know EDI, the more I was forced to shift my way of thinking.  How could I think that EDI was something so different to us when she kept the ship going, or ordered me new medical supplies because she happened to think of me?  I saw the way she was always joking with us, and how she wanted to learn what it was like to be human.  I was wrong before.”  A wry smile pulled at the edges of her mouth.  “EDI did have a soul, if any of us do.  It was a good one.”

Javik, standing at the back of the little group, looked down to where EDI lay, then looked back at the gathering, opening his mouth to speak.  Shepard watched him in hesitation, unsure of what he would say.  Joker, too, looked incredulous.  But Javik simply said, “The Reapers have taken much from the galaxy in this war.  This EDI had much still to offer.  It is a pity that she is gone.” 

Shepard let out a long breath, grateful that Javik had come to some kind of peace with EDI’s synthetic nature.  She felt a hand at her elbow, and saw that Liara had stepped in next to her.  Liara gave her a sad smile.

“EDI had a spirit of curiosity, and a desire to learn, that I admired.  She and I both sought to understand the galaxy around us.  She was not a human, not a geth; but she was herself, and in the end, that is all that can be asked of anyone,” said Liara.  She lowered her head, folding her hands together. 

“It was an honor to serve with EDI,” said Kaidan.  “Even if her body formerly tried to kill me.”  He tried to smile, but it was lopsided, as if he was only going through the motions of smiling  “No matter how she came to be, or what she was or wasn’t… she was a loyal member of this crew.  And we will remember her.”

Shepard felt the gazes of her crewmates upon her.  Nearly everyone had spoken, now; she realized that it was her turn.  She had thought of this moment countless times in the past few days, and now that it was here, it almost felt beyond her.  Despite this, she began to speak, unable to keep the tremor from her voice.

“When I first set foot on the SR-2, I… didn’t know what to make of EDI,” Shepard said, remembering the suspicion she had felt, the frustration that Cerberus would be spying on her.  At that time, she had never considered an AI to truly be sentient the way organics were.  “But as we started working together, there were little things that made me realize how much I liked her.  She pissed off Joker so much back then.  I’d talk to her back in my cabin and sometimes we’d come up with ways to mess with him together.”  She laughed, relieved to have a genuinely happy memory come to mind. 

“Some of that was you?” Joker said, grinning despite his reddened eyes.  “Should have known you’d both be out to get me.”

“Of course,” said Shepard.  “But once Joker unshackled her, I saw how much she cared.  She was devastated when the Collectors attacked.  I think that was the first time I realized that under the electronics, EDI was just another person trying to do the right thing.  When she got her mobile platform, suddenly she could do even more.  She could be a friend to give you a pat on the shoulder, though there was some trial and error where she wasn’t sure how hard to pat at first.”  She laughed again, but her eyes began to sting.  Her shoulder had been bruised for days.  She wanted to smile at the memory, but her vision blurred. 

“EDI wanted to believe that this galaxy had room for all of us.  She gave me this victory ring as a symbol of that,” Shepard said, rubbing the ring with her thumb.  It felt warm beneath her touch, despite the fact her hands were cold.  She shivered, and Garrus’s hand tightened around hers.  

“Nothing I can do will bring her back,” she whispered.  “But I can remember her.  She was a friend.  She was a good soldier.  And she was alive.”  She leaned against Garrus, the weight of her choices upon her, and she closed her eyes.  She felt the prick of tears, but she refused to let them fall.  She could not let the crew see her like this.  She breathed in through her nose, willing herself to keep it together.  She opened her eyes.

Joker pulled off his baseball cap, holding it over his chest.  He touched the side of EDI’s face, his fingers curling against her cheek.  He looked up at all of them. 

“I used to think I hated her,” he said.  “ _‘_ _Mr. Moreau, I am not touching you_ ,’” he mimicked, smiling slightly.  “She was always harassing me.  I thought she was a Cerberus menace.  But when the Collectors came… she was the only one who could help me.  She was the one who got them off the ship, I just did the manual labor.  But after that, I started to realize — she was my friend, and she had been there.  For all of us.” 

He glanced at Shepard, and she could not read the look on his face.  Was it anger?  Gratitude?  Grief?  He spoke.  “There’s a lot I could say right now.  I could tell you guys about the time she overloaded Cerberus servers with seven zettabytes of porn, which by the way was mostly  _hers_ , not mine.  I could talk about how flying the Normandy was like some kind of heaven with EDI as my copilot.  The way we worked together?  It was like nothing I’d ever done before.  She was a dream.”  His voice cracked.  “I could tell you about the way she wanted to see Tiptree, and my father’s orchard.  Or the night she found out Dad and Gunny didn’t make it.  She kept the ship flying, even when I….”  He bent down stiffly, pressing a kiss to EDI’s forehead.  “Now I’m just rambling.  You were the best, EDI.  That’s all I really gotta say.”

He straightened up, then nodded to Kaidan, Shepard, and Liara.  Shepard let her energy flow forward, saw it merge with the gentle waves of blue from the other biotics.  The mass effect field slowly surrounded EDI’s body, and together the three of them lifted her up, up, then softly lowered her into the grave.  She lay there, metal gleaming in the chilly sunlight, silver against the rich brown loam of Tiptree soil.  Shepard hoped, for only a moment, that EDI’s eyes would light up again, that she would hear that playful, curious voice once more.  But the hope died within her before it could take root.  There was only inert metal and emptiness in that grave, and the friend that had been EDI was gone.

Joker bent down at the edge of the grave, taking some of the fresh dirt beneath his hands.  With difficulty he rose up again, then crumbled the dirt over her body.  “It won’t be the same without you, EDI,” he whispered.  He nodded again to Shepard, and she, Liara and Kaidan lifted the rest of the soil bringing it down into the grave, letting it fall until there was no sign of a silver sheen.

Shepard looked down into the grave.  Even in the morning sun, the ground EDI now slept in was dark and deep.  Shepard looked at the ground, and she felt everything, and she felt nothing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> EDI I'M SO SORRY :( :( :(


	26. Tension

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tensions rise after a tough day.

The day crawled on after EDI’s memorial.  Ennui drifted over the crew, along with a heavy sense of letdown.  Garrus could feel it around them all, despite the fact that the majority of the crew had dispersed.  Some were back on the ship, cross-referencing the locations of damaged buildings with census records from the colony, creating final casualty lists for the Alliance.  Others were still on the ground, using biotics to clear debris, scanning isolated farms for signs of life.  So far there had been no excited voices hailing their comms, no triumphant cries of “I’ve found someone!”  There was only silence.

He had been helping Kaidan for a while, but broke off after a few hours to go and check on Shepard.  Dr. Chakwas had chided her after the funeral for pushing herself too hard, too fast; she had set a strict limit on Shepard, allowing her to only be out for a few hours before needing to come back on the ship.  

Garrus felt uneasy, realizing that she had left the visible perimeter of the area he had been working.  It still made him nervous when she was alone for too long.  He could still recall too easily how she looked curled up on the floor of the med-bay, the hospital gown falling off of one shoulder, her face stricken.  He shook the memory away and flicked his comm relay open.  It wouldn’t do any harm to check up on her.  “Shepard, where’re you at?” he asked.  

It took her a moment to reply, and Garrus stared at his omni-tool, willing her to respond.  She would be fine.  There were no threats remaining here, nothing to fear.  When her voice crackled through to greet him, he exhaled heavily in relief, his mandibles flicking.   

“I think I’m in what used to be downtown,” she said.  “Looking around.  I’m fine.”

“There’s not much more to do here, I’ll join you,” he said.   

There was a brief pause.  “All right.”  She patched through a set of coordinates, and he set out to meet her.  She was near what had, according to the old layouts of the colony, been a small sports field.  Their most recent information on Tiptree, a truncated asari commando report, stated that the town’s arena had been converted to holding cells and an indoctrination center.  It was only a five minute walk away, though Garrus wondered how Shepard had found herself over in that direction.  Perhaps Cortez had dropped her off in the shuttle.  He was making frequent stops to ferry the team further away, as their radius of search increased.

Garrus saw the wreckage before he saw Shepard.  The holding cells had been flattened by an enormous concussive blast; even the grass was scorched.  It took him a moment before he caught sight of her, sitting down amongst the debris.  He made his way over to her and settled down beside her on a large chunk of concrete.  There was room for both of them.

“What’s a nice girl like you doing in a place like this?” he asked.

Shepard was leaning forward, her chin on resting on her fist.  She glanced over at him, and he saw that she had been crying.  There were the telltale red splotches to her face, the swelling of her eyelids.  He reached out a hand and rubbed her back.

“Been thinking about things?” he said.

“You could say that,” Shepard replied.  “Maybe I shouldn’t have come here.  To Tiptree, I mean.”

“How come?”

She thought for a moment, sniffing.  She rubbed at her face with one hand.  “I don’t know.  It was just a bad idea.  I’m so goddamned tired of this war, Garrus.”  She pulled her hand away from her face, gesturing to the gray rubble surrounding them.  “How many centers were there like this around the galaxy?  How many innocent people lost their minds here and were turned into husks or cannibals?  How many were melted down and sucked up into the belly of a Reaper, like what we saw with the Collectors?”

“We knew we were going to lose people,” said Garrus softly.  “It’s awful, but at least it’s over now.  This will never happen again.”

“That’s the thing that gets me.  _We_ _didn’t have to lose them_ ,” Shepard said, her voice bitter and cold.  Her face twisted with a barely concealed rage.  “I knew this was coming.  If only I could have persuaded the Council, forced them to believe in what was coming.  We could have saved millions.”  She hung her head.  “But I couldn’t get them to see it, no matter how hard I tried.”

“You did everything possible to make them understand.  No one could have gotten them to get their heads out of their asses, I guarantee you that,” said Garrus.  He squeezed her shoulder, feeling helpless.  He never knew what to say to get her out of these moods.

“I’ve done impossible things before,” Shepard argued.  “Why not that?  What did I say wrong?  I could’ve stopped this, Garrus!”  Her voice was rising, and the color flushed in her cheeks again.  

“No, you couldn’t have!” Garrus insisted, frustrated that she kept trying to blame herself.  “There’s only so much one person could have done.  You went above and beyond to save as many as you could.  You need to stop blaming yourself for things that were never in your control.”

“Don’t tell me what I need to do,” Shepard said, and the look in her eyes was dangerous.  He knew that look.  He had never expected to see it directed at him.  Despite his desire to help her, anger flared within him.  Didn’t she see that he was on her side here?  Didn’t she understand that he was trying to save her from herself?

“Why does it always have to be your fault, Shepard?” he said sharply.  “It was a war!  That’s what happens in war.  Why do you hold yourself to these impossible standards?”

“Because someone needs to at least try to save them all.  Why shouldn’t it be me?  If I didn’t expect the best from myself, this galaxy would be ended,” she snapped.  “No one else stepped up to deal with Saren!  The Collectors would have destroyed every human world by now if I hadn’t gone in there and blown them to hell.  What about taking out Cerberus?  What about whipping the krogan and the quarians and the asari into shape to get their asses on our side?  If I didn’t have those standards, where would we be?”  She got to her feet, stabbing her cane into the ground.  “So don’t you  _dare_  tell me not to judge myself.  I know what I’m capable of, Garrus, and I know _I_ _could have done better_.”   

“Dammit, Shepard,” he growled, getting to his feet.  He towered over her, but she was not fazed.  “Maybe it’s something humans do, but I’m tired of seeing you wallow in self-loathing.  Knock it off.” 

“No one said you had to stick around for that,” she hissed, staring at him.  “I’m doing what I can.  That’s going to have to be enough for now.  Can you handle that?  Besides, I know wallowing’s not just a human thing.  Or have you forgotten Sidonis?  Turians self-flagellate, too.”

“That was different,” he said, and he could feel the blood rushing to his neck and the sides of his throat, a sign he was getting too agitated.  He breathed rapidly, his heart pounding.  “That was  _directly_ my fault —”

“Bullshit it was,” Shepard interrupted.  “Sidonis was a coward and a traitor, but it wasn’t your fault he was a good actor.  He had your whole team fooled.  Don’t they share any of the guilt for not realizing what he was?” 

“I was their leader.  It was my responsibility to —”

“Exactly.  You held yourself to a higher standard because you had to, because there were people depending on you.  See?  Two of us can play at that game.  If you get to hate yourself sometimes, I should be afforded the same privilege,” said Shepard.

“You’re not being fair, and you know it,” Garrus said in a low, thrumming voice. 

“Fair!” Shepard barked, throwing her head back.  “What about this goddamned war has ever been fair?  You think it was fair for Joker to lose his family?  For me to kill EDI and destroy the geth?  Was it fair that Earth and Palaven were nearly razed?  None of it’s ever been fucking fair.” 

“You don’t have to tell me that, Shepard.”  He crossed his arms, leaning away from her.  “Look, I didn’t come out here to fight.  I was just trying to watch your back.”

She looked up at him, her uneven hair hanging in her eyes, her face smudged with dirt from the debris.  “You’re not my keeper, Garrus, and you shouldn’t have to be.  Maybe I wanted to be alone after the funeral.  Did you consider that?”

Garrus stiffened, and narrowed his eyes.  “In case you forgot, bad things tend to happen when I leave you alone.  Maybe you wouldn’t have died at all if I’d been on the SR-1 with you.  If I’d been there in the Crucible, then you wouldn’t have had to bear that choice on your own. And if I’d been there a few weeks ago, maybe I wouldn’t have found you trying to kill yourself.  So forgive me for feeling a little nervous when you’re alone,” he said.  

“Stop blaming yourself for my choices,” she begged.  “I see you doing it!  Every day!  I know I’m not the only one who can’t sleep through the night.  But you don’t talk to me about it.  You bottle things up, just as much as I do.”

“What you want me to say?” he asked, tearing his gaze from her to stare into the distance, wishing this fight was over.  They had disagreed before, certainly, about tactics, politics, the best weapon in a firefight.  Usually they were resolved quickly with a friendly sparring session or, more recently, a friendly bedroom session.  But this…  His stomach roiled, and the words they had said felt like poison on the air.  He couldn’t seem to find his way back to being calm. 

“What do you want me to say, Shepard?” he said again.  The words flooded out of him.  “Do you want me to tell you how it feels to see you torturing yourself?  Or how it feels seeing the strongest person I’ve ever known struggling to walk with a cane?  It feels like hell.  I didn’t want to say anything to you because you’ve got more than enough to deal with.”  

He was pacing in front of her, unconsciously shifting from side to side in frustration, gesturing as he spoke.  “Do you want me to talk about what keeps me up at night?  Fine.  I told you once I don’t have nightmares.  Instead I stay awake, and I wonder,  _what if she can’t come back_?  I wonder if all the help in the world, if everything the Alliance can do for you, if everything that I can do for you… I’m afraid it won’t be enough.  And it kills me.”

She stared at him, and for an instant he could see the way he had wounded her.  Her lips parted in a ragged breath, and tears shone in her eyes.  Then her face hardened again, the line of her jaw tensing.  The damage had been done. 

He turned away from her, a fine tremor running through his hands, his breaths heavy and pained.  “Sorry I bothered you,” he said, his voice shaking.  “I have some calibrations I need to do.”  He strode away, hurrying through the rubble. 

“Garrus!” she called behind him.  But he did not look back to her.  His fingers curled and uncurled, aching to feel a gun in them, to destroy something.  With destruction all around him, all he could think of was to add to it.  

The thought made him feel worse, and he broke into a jog, heading to the ship.  He wanted to bury himself deep in numbers and figures, in cold calculation.  Maybe then he could forget this conversation.  Maybe then he’d forget the look on her face, furious, hurt.  

Maybe.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> SO MUCH LOVE to my darling mordororbust on tumblr for betaing this chapter for me. I really wanted it to go well and even though she doesn’t know the fandom she still stepped up to be awesome. Thank you dear!


	27. Aftermath

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shepard worries about what to say to Garrus.

Shepard stood in the shower, leaning against the wall.  She panted as the hot water cascaded over her, clouds of steam rising around her.  Her dripping hair fell into her eyes and she wiped it away angrily.

Stupid.  That was the word that kept coming to mind.  It had been stupid to fight with Garrus.  It was counterproductive, and pointless.  The only comfort she could take was that there was no life-or-death mission on the line now; there was only collecting and cataloguing remnants of the dead, busy work that anyone could do.  No one relied on her right now to hold the line.  She was bitterly glad for it, as she knew she would be useless right now.

After the fight, she had let Garrus go, ashamed of herself for the way she had spoken to him, furious that he had not seen her point, and at the same time reeling that her fears had been revealed to be true.  He did find her a burden, even if he’d couched it in kinder language than that.  She was the reason he lay awake at night.  So she let him walk away from her, and she did not chase after him.  He deserved a break from her, she thought viciously.

When he had left, Shepard had turned her attention to the rubble at her feet.  Nova after nova crashed from her hand, and when she was done, her legs trembled and ached, and she coughed in the cloud of pulverized concrete she had created.  There was still no evidence of any human, living or dead, in the mess.  She flared up, the debris around her quivering, then vaporizing, in the throb of the mass effect field.  She limped to another area where the concrete was piled high and the walls stood brokenly around her, and she did it again.  Again.  

She only stopped when her hands began shaking too violently to control the waves of energy.  Her cane fell from her hands and she crumpled to her knees, stifling a cry when her bad leg jarred painfully against the uneven ground.  That was when she had called for Cortez to pick her up in the shuttle, and take her back to the Normandy.

In the shower, she rubbed her leg, trying to massage away the pain.  She had stopped by the med-bay after returning to the ship, and Dr. Chakwas had insisted on giving her some pain medications.  They were not strong enough to dull her feelings, only enough to dull the ache from her leg.  She wished she felt like sleeping off the misery of the day and waking up tomorrow to try again, but she knew if she lay down, she would end up only staring out of the window at the dull skies of Tiptree.

She thought back to earlier in the day, after Garrus had left her.  The bright sunlight of the morning for EDI’s funeral had gone, replaced by swollen gunmetal clouds brooding overhead.  The cold breeze was back, but it felt like a relief; she had been sweating in her dress blues after so much exercise of her biotics.  She had spread her arms and legs out, the cloth of her uniform scraping against the rough ground.

She could have stayed there; never left that graveyard, never disappointed anyone or shot off her mouth again.  Her stomach churned with nausea at the things she had said to Garrus.  The one person who wanted nothing but the best for her, and she had attacked him, taking out her rage and her unresolved grief on him instead of working it out on her own.  Of course, goaded, he had brought it right back to her; let her know just how much she weighed on him, wounding her more with that than anything else he could have said.  He knew how to fight dirty, too.  

Shepard turned the water off, and reached for the towel folded on the counter.  She dried herself vigorously, then dressed in her fatigues.  Her hair stuck up at odd angles and she wrestled with it, combing it down into submission until the damp locks lay somewhat flat.

She limped to her computer desk, sitting stiffly in the desk chair.  Her hand hovered over the communications console.  She could call down to the main battery.  Garrus was probably there, furiously calibrating.  She knew he had only been slightly passive-aggressive with his parting shot of needing to go calibrate; it really did calm him down to work with machines and figures.  But she did not know what she should say to him.  

Her fingers rested cautiously on the console.  She keyed in the code for the main battery, and heard the sounds of normal machine work.  She released the button before she could say a word.  

She sat there silently, running over the fight in her head again.  She felt a flash of anger at remembering Garrus telling her not to feel so responsible for things.  The fact was that she had single-handedly played a larger part in this war than any other one individual.  It was an insane burden to carry, she reflected.  Why was he surprised that she felt so consumed by the casualties of the war?  Who was he to tell her not to feel what she felt?  

She wished there was someone she could talk to about it, someone uninvolved, someone who wasn’t on the ship.  The gossip on the Normandy traveled as fast as if it had flown through a mass relay.  She didn’t want to add to the rumors that were probably already traveling around about Garrus’ huffy return to the main battery, or Shepard’s pulverizing the rubble for no good reason.  She sighed, a muscle above her eyebrow twitching.

She used the intercom to buzz down to Traynor.  “Hey, Traynor, it’s Shepard."

“What can I do for you?” Traynor asked, her voice much quieter than it usually was.  EDI’s funeral had been hard on the communications officer, Shepard knew.  The normally cheerful tone to Traynor’s voice was replaced by a business-like sound, with the sense of focusing on the task at hand.  “Shepard?”

Shepard realized she had been thinking about the funeral again, leaving an awkward silence on the comm.  “I was… just wondering if there were any communications from the Sol system.  If we’re able to get word back to them.”

“I’m sorry, Co— Shepard.  Still no word from the Sol system.  I’ve tried enhancing the Normandy’s arrays but we’re still only getting rare bits of static pinging through, otherwise, it’s just radio silence.  I might have more luck interpreting that static if EDI was here, but…”  She fell silent.

“I know.  I miss her too,” Shepard said.  She let out a long breath.  “Thanks, Traynor.  Shepard out.”

Shepard leaned back in her chair, running a hand through her damp hair.  It was trying to tangle again.  She wished that it was possible to get word back to Earth.  She wanted to talk to her counselor, vent about Garrus and possibly get some tips for figuring out what to say to him.  She hated being at odds with him, but she did not feel yet that she was up to apologizing.

She smiled sadly.  There was another person who could help her with Garrus, but she wasn’t here, and could not be reached.  Mom always had the best advice when it came to boys, or girls for that matter.  But Hannah Shepard had not yet made it back to the Sol system before the Normandy left for Tiptree.  All she had heard from Hackett was that a brief transmission from Mom’s ship had made it through, and the crew was alive.  They had managed to send word back that Shepard had survived the run to the Citadel, but that was it.  For a moment Shepard remembered saying goodbye to her mother the day she had enlisted; her mother had been so proud.  “Stay safe out there,” she’d said, which Shepard had promptly failed to do a thousand times over.  

After Cerberus rebuilt her Shepard had only been able to send messages to her mother, not wanting to sully her mother’s command with a visit from a Cerberus-clad prodigal daughter.  During the Reaper war they had only managed brief communications now and then.  It had been years since they’d had a proper talk.  Shepard had only been able to mention once that she maybe, kind of, sort of had a thing for the turian on her crew, much to her mother’s amusement.

Even so, she knew that if she could speak to Mom, she’d know just the right thing to say.

Shepard sighed.  She had a feeling she already knew what her mother’s advice would be.  “Talk it out,” she had said when Shepard was a teenager crying in her bunk, upset that her girlfriend Nina said “No” when Shepard asked to be her study partner, even though they had been dating for a whole two weeks!  She laughed a little, recalling how devastated she had felt at the time.  Yet now the incident seemed comical, time and perspective granting Shepard an opportunity to see it for what it was: a small spat, insignificant in the long run.  She had indeed taken her mother’s advice to talk to Nina about it, and she found that Nina had said no because she didn’t want to be distracted from her studies by Shepard flirting with her.  She’d been forced to admit it was a pretty good reason.

“Talk it out, huh?” she said to the empty room.  This was no fight about teenage misunderstandings and silly hurt feelings; she and Garrus had each dug deeply into each other’s psyches, ripping at the things they feared most.  Garrus still got cold and distant if the subject of his team on Omega came up; she knew it hurt him to throw it back in his face.  Of course, he’d hurt her too.

Shepard stared at the intercom.  She knew she was going to be useless until they resolved this.   This time when she keyed the code for the main battery, she did not hesitate.  “Garrus?”

There was a pause, and she thought she heard a catch in his voice.  “Shepard?”

“Got a minute?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That's right, I've got an end game on this sucker! It feels scary but good, haha.
> 
> This chapter's a bit short because the next one's going to be rather long, what with Garrus and Shepard sorting things out... ;)


	28. Recalibrating

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shepard and Garrus talk it out.

Shepard stood nervously in the hall leading up to the main battery, staring at the closed door.  She was being foolish, she told herself.  How many times had she walked up to this door, breezed through it to enter the battery?  How many times had she sought comfort from Garrus here, or walked in to tease him and try to distract him?  She pursed her lips.   _Talk it out_ , she told herself.

She walked through the door.  Garrus was waiting for her.  He had cleared off his workbench and was leaning against the wall beside it, trying to look casual.  She felt a little better at realizing he was nervous too.

“Hey,” she said.

“Hey,” he said.

She shifted her weight, putting most of it onto her good leg.  She glanced at the crate next to the workbench.  “Mind if I take a seat?”

“Sure,” Garrus said stiffly.  

She settled down onto the crate, holding her cane in front of her, staring at her hands.  She was unsure of where to start.

“So, is this the part in the vids where the lovestruck couple kisses and makes up?” asked Garrus.  She glanced up at him.  His head was tilted to one side, his civilian clothes rumpled and dirt-stained from the work out in the field he’d been doing.  Like her, he had not bothered to change into armor after the funeral, but instead had gone straight to work in the ruined landscape of Tiptree.

“Not quite,” Shepard said, a small smile quirking her face despite herself.  “First we have to sort out what we said.  Then if you still like me, maybe we can do the kissing part.” 

“Hey now,” Garrus said warningly.  “Of course I still like you, what kind of thing is that to say?  Really, Shepard.”

She grinned at him.  “Just checking.  I still like you too, if you were worried.”

“Good,” he said, an awkward silence spreading between them.  Shepard’s hands tightened on the cane’s grip.  

“Out there,” she said slowly, “I was just angry.  At everything.  You get that, right?”  

“It seemed you were more than a little angry at me.  Let’s be honest.”  

She shrugged, leaning back against the workbench.  “That too.”  She thought carefully about what she was trying to say.  She wanted to apologize, but she also wanted him to understand where she had been coming from.  “I was already feeling shitty because of the funeral.  That was rough.  I did want to be alone afterwards, to think about EDI and to think about what she meant to so many people….  I wasn’t lying about that.”  

“I should have thought of it on my own, anyway,” Garrus said.  “So much for my powers of observation.”

“But then I was upset because it seemed like you were trying to tell me how to feel about this war, and what it’s done,” she said.  “I don’t really know how it is for turians, but humans -- I think we’re at the mercy of our emotions much more than we like to admit.  We feel them.  The only thing we can control is what we do about them, but we can’t stop them from coming on.  So for you to tell me to stop feeling guilty… it’s not only upsetting, it’s… impossible.  You have to realize that.”

Garrus considered her words, crossing his arms.  When he spoke, his tone was gentle; none of the harshness of what they had ended on earlier.  They both were being careful.  “Turians aren’t any better at that.  Not really.  We like to pretend we are, but you were right.  I still feel guilty about Sidonis, and what he did to my men.  I still blame myself.  Asking me to stop that wouldn’t change how I felt about it, and  I can see how the same would be true for you.  Though I’ll say that hearing you throw that out in an argument was a low blow.”  He let out a long breath, then sat on the end of the workbench, a few feet between them.  

“I know it was,” Shepard said.  “I’m sorry.  I should never have used it like that.  I know how hard it was for you.”  She made to reach for his hand, but pulled away before he saw what she was doing.  “I’m glad it’s not only humans who have trouble with their emotions, at least.”

“But I thought that was part of what you were trying to do in therapy.  I thought they were trying to teach you how to stop feeling  _so_  guilty.  I hate seeing you like that, Shepard.”

“It takes time,” she said.  “You can’t be impatient.  That’s what they keep telling me.  I guess I could have shared more of the process with you, it’s just that it’s exhausting enough doing it the first time without giving you the recap later.  You know?”  She stared down at her feet.  “I know I’ve been pulling away from you.  In some ways it was easier to withdraw.  Then I’d have fewer things to face." 

“I want to be here for you,” Garrus said.  “That’s part of why what you said got to me.  I don’t mean to be your keeper, but I’ve always had your back.”  He rubbed at the back of his neck, clearly uncomfortable.  “I don’t like hearing that that’s a bad thing.”

“It’s not,” Shepard said.  “I shouldn’t have said it like that.  I know why you were nervous about me being off alone.  Do you think it’s easy for me, knowing that I gave everyone  _good reason_  to be worried?  Who knows?  I don’t know what’s going to happen tomorrow.  Maybe I’ll feel suicidal again someday.  I can’t promise that I won’t, and I hate that,” she muttered.  “I hate that you can’t trust me.  I hate that I’m a burden to you, Garrus; I know it’s not what you signed up for.  Hearing that that’s what I’ve become to you… I won’t lie.  That was really hard.”  She knotted her fingers together over the cane’s firm surface, willing herself to stay calm.  She was no longer angry, but she wished she was; anger was easier than shame.

“Stop it,” he said, his voice thrumming.  He reached out and stroked her cheek with his hand, and she closed her eyes, feeling the familiar touch of two fingers and a thumb against her skin.  “I should never have….  Look.  Part of that was true.  It  _does_ hurt, seeing you hurt.  But I didn’t mean for you to think that you were a burden to me.  I love you, Shepard.  This whole situation?  It’s damn hard for both of us, but that doesn’t mean I’m not glad to have you back.  I would take worrying about you and being -- being  _scared_  for you -- over losing you, any day.  I’ve lost you twice.  I never want it to happen again.”

She reached her hand up to her cheek, folding her fingers over his.  She pressed a kiss to the palm of his hand.  “I’m still not sure how long it was before they found me,” she said softly.  Everything had been such a blur in the hospital; she had no idea how long it had been before Garrus had actually arrived at her bedside.  

“It was two weeks before I knew you were alive,” Garrus said, the edges of his mandibles vibrating in a gesture she recognized as distress.  “I don’t like to think about it,” he said rapidly.  “It was hard enough losing you as my commander and my friend before.  When I thought I’d lost you again --”  He broke off, unable to continue.

“Garrus,” she murmured, reaching out to bring him into an embrace.  She wrapped her arms around him, feeling the comfort of his arms shifting to encircle her.  She pressed her face against the angle of his chest, blinking back sudden tears.  “And you haven’t been wanting to tell me any of this because you didn’t want me to worry.”

“Maybe,” he said, averting his gaze.  “I felt like it was… wrong.  You were the one who had been through so much, and it was selfish for me to not be strong for you.”

“Of course it’s going to be hard for you,” she said.  “You thought you lost me.  You’re allowed to feel shitty about it.”  She smiled clumsily at him.  “I guess I’d be worried if you  _weren’t_  a little fucked up right now.  If we were both fine after everything that’s happened, I think we would have to be psychopaths.”

“Fair point,” Garrus said.  The distressed look slowly faded from his face.

Shepard hugged him tightly.  Everything they had said to each other earlier was true, in a way; but also true was the fact that she loved this turian, and he loved her.  The war had damaged countless lives and worlds.  She knew that she would never be the same; she knew he would never be, either.  Maybe that was all right to recognize.

“I’m sorry, Garrus,” she said.  “I love you, and even when I’m in a terrible mood I hope you know that.”  She thought back to the fight.  “I’ll keep trying to work on not blaming myself.  I know objectively that it was a war, that casualties were inevitable.  But if I’m in one of those moods where all I can think about is what I could have done… just listen to me.  I’ll come out of it eventually.  Maybe I need to talk about those things to get them out of my system, instead of being told that I’m wrong.”

“I’m sorry too, Shepard,” he said, his voice rumbling against the side of her face.  “I can listen.  I know I usually try to fix things; I forget that not every problem has a solution, sometimes.  And maybe we both can work on not keeping things to ourselves.”  He chuckled a little, the sound sweet.  “I love you.”

She lifted her head, studying his face.  The blue eyes, so bright, gentle one moment and ruthless the next.  His scars, souvenir of other struggles from other days, a reminder that despite the memories, time did heal.  The curve of his facial plates, the blue of his tattoos, the length of his fringe, the way his mandibles moved; all of it marked him as her Garrus.  She felt a stirring within her, mingled love and gratitude.  

“I think  _this_  is where we kiss and make up,” she said slyly, and before he could say anything she pulled his face down to hers, pressing her lips firmly against his mouth, her tongue sliding into the gap.  

He groaned into her mouth, the sound rich and thrilling.  Ah.  Shepard felt familiar heat between her legs, the welcome rush of electricity that suddenly sent her skin crackling.  She leaned back from the kiss, staring directly into his eyes.  “Actually, I think we might need to do more than kiss.  It was a pretty big fight, after all.”

“Mmm,” Garrus said, his chest rising and falling a little more rapidly.  “I think I could go for that.”

She wasn’t sure of what happened when, but she found herself clumsily straddling him on the crate, his hands fumbling at the snaps on her uniform.  He pulled it down to her waist as she ground against his growing arousal, which was teasingly palpable through his civilian clothes.  “I’m so glad you didn’t wear your armor,” she laughed as he ran his hands over her breasts, squeezing them through her bra.  She felt another fumble of his hands at her back, and she pulled the bra off, tossing it to the ground.  “It’s such a pain to get you out of it when I just want to f-- ahhh,” she groaned as he slipped her nipple into his mouth, his velvety tongue and hot breath sending her twisting against his lap.  

He raised his head, his mouth half open in the turian version of a grin.  “Oh, did you like that?” he asked playfully.

She slapped one hand against his shoulder.  “Yes, of course,” she huffed.  She worked her hips against his.  Her left hip was weaker, and she felt a twinge that probably meant she would regret this in the morning, but she didn’t care.  “Come on,” she said, yanking at his shirt.  “Fair’s fair.”  He obligingly raised his arms over his head, and she removed his shirt over his fringe, throwing the cloth on the ground to lay with her bra.  She reached out with one hand to remove his visor, setting it down beside them on the crate.

He gathered her into his arms and they both groaned at the feel of her breasts against his smooth chest plates, the soft skin of her belly against the supple leather of his abdomen.  “Don’t stop,” Garrus said, breathing into her ear before nuzzling against her hair and her neck.  “We’re only halfway there.”  She felt his hands against the waistband of her fatigues, and she shifted off of his lap to wiggle all the way out of her clothing, kicking her boots off.  Beside her he did the same, and she was gratified to see his phallus standing firm between the slit in his groin plates.

She grinned at him, then leaned down over his lap, reaching out her tongue to lap against the head of his phallus, her hand curling around the shaft.  Garrus’s hips bucked towards her, and he clutched at her hair, panting.  “Shepard, you feel too damn good,” he groaned.  The tremble in his voice made her quiver, and she slid him fully into her mouth, relishing the way he whimpered.  She always loved the way this turned him aching and helpless, and today was no exception as he thrusted into her mouth, his moans wickedly sensual.

She eased back before he could come, licking the tip of his phallus before sitting back up.  She could feel her own arousal pooling between her legs, and she smiled at him, grabbing his hand and slipping its fingers into her mouth, coating them with saliva.  “Care to give a girl a hand?” she asked, leaning against him.

He answered with a hard kiss, pressing his fingers against her clit.  She gasped out of the kiss, clutching at him to wrap her arms around him.  “Fuck, Garrus,” she hissed, scarcely able to bear his touch against her, his fingers working her until her legs shuddered.  He slipped both fingers into her, and she groaned, tightening around him.  God  _damn_ it, but she needed more, even as she ground against his hand.

She looked into his eyes, thrilling at the way they were half-lidded with the heaviness of lust mixed with love.  “Garrus,” she whispered, and he moaned, sliding his fingers out of her wetness to lift her onto his lap.  She reached behind herself, grasping his phallus, guiding it between her throbbing lips.  For a moment they froze, looking into each other’s eyes, his phallus just barely inside of her -- and then he thrust, and she groaned with it, her chest heaving. 

“Oh,  _Shepard_ ,” Garrus purred, his eyes closing in ecstasy, his hands gripping her hips.  

“Missed you,” Shepard whispered, driving herself lower onto him, biting her lip at the fullness within her.  “ _Fuck_ , you feel good, Garrus.”

They began to move together, their movements alternating between tenderly soft and slow, to furiously deep and hard.  She could not keep her hands from him, touching his scars, his fringe, his throat, his chest; and she could not keep her mouth from his, trailing kisses from the soft skin of his neck to his carapace, his chest, his shoulder.  He could not stop touching her, twining his fingers in her hair, stroking her cheek, running his hands over her breasts and back.  She shivered with delirious pleasure, rolling her hips to pull him deeper inside of her, feeling him move beneath her, within her.  She had missed him so goddamned much, the way they moved with each other, the sweet contrast between half-armored turian and soft smooth human.  Every inch of her felt raw and alive in a way she hadn’t felt for months; and she shook with it.

This was life, she remembered; messy, frantic, aching and desperate.  She arched her back, pulled his face forward into the curve between her breasts.  She had missed this joyous, hungry movement between them, the gasps of low subharmonics mingling with her high-pitched cries.  There was still good in this galaxy, found in the concrete sensations of lips against mouth plates and three fingers twined in five.  The world could fall around them now and she would not care.  There was only Garrus, and Shepard, and the exquisite sweetness of their joining.  This was life, and it was fucking  _good_.

“Garrus,” she groaned, her legs trembling as she clenched around him.  She was close, and he was too; he gripped her tightly, burying his face in the crook of her neck, hips thrusting in a desperate rhythm.  The breath tore itself from her lungs in gasps, and she clawed at him, her skin hungry for his.  Everything was hot agony, unbearable ecstasy -- she jerked her hips hard against his, begging, pleading, deeper, deeper --

“Shepard!” Garrus cried, shuddering into her, and she collapsed forward, her body quaking around him, her mouth gasping his name again and again.

It was a few moments before either of them could speak again; Shepard still was breathing hard through her mouth when she said, “Maybe we should fight more often.”  She wiped her forehead, feeling sweat on her fingers.

Garrus opened his eyes slowly, shifting forward so he was no longer leaning against the workbench.  He reached up and cupped her cheek with his hand, then rested his forehead against hers.  “It would certainly have its advantages,” he said, his voice still a little weak.  He laughed.  “You’ve still got it, Shepard.”

“So do you, Vakarian,” she said warmly.  She edged back on his knees, gingerly setting her feet on the ground and standing up.  She would definitely be sore in the morning, but it was a good thing.  She reached down and started picking up the clothes, pulling them back on, getting awkwardly into her boots.  Garrus pulled his trousers back on and reached for his tunic.  

“You know, I just thought of something,” said Garrus.  He twitched his sleeves back down over his elbows.

“What’s that?” Shepard asked, stifling a yawn.  Right now the idea of curling up in bed with a turian sounded rather excellent.

“You know how when we usually have a romantic interlude in here?  How we usually lock up the door and set the Thanix cannon to one of its maintenance cycles for the extra noise?”  Garrus winked at her.  “We might have forgotten to do that this time around.”

Shepard glanced at the door, incredulous.  She pulled up her omni-tool, and cursed at the display.  “... and it’s dinnertime, isn’t it.”

“Might be, yeah.”

“And most of the crew are probably right out there.”

“There’s a high probability that that’s the case.” 

Shepard pursed her lips, considering.  She could open the door and limp out there for an epic walk of shame.  Or…  “There’s a saying we have back on Earth, Garrus,” she said, edging towards him and laying one hand against his scars, the other hand tracing its way downward against his chest, lingering around his waist. 

“What’s that, Shepard?”

“You might as well be hanged for a sheep as a lamb,” she said silkily.

“What does that mean --  _ahhh_.  You’re going to --?  Um.  Okay, then.  That feels -- ahh, ahh,  _Shepard_  -- I think I might get what it means.”

She would have told him his guess was right, but her mouth was busy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> eheheheheeheheheheh *enormous amounts of giggling*


	29. First Flight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The crew begins to move on from the horrors of the Reaper war.

The days began to pass into some semblance of normal.  The work on Tiptree proceeded slowly, but surely.  When the rubble had been thoroughly scanned, work began of preserving materials that could be repurposed and destroying those that could not, freeing up valuable space for rebuilding.  It took a few weeks, and though Shepard heard occasional complaints from the crew about the tedium of the work, she suspected that most of them felt the way that she did; grateful to be doing something that helped rebuild, instead of merely working to destroy.  

She grew stronger every day.  She still carried a cane, but it was no longer the solid model that she had been using before.  She now had a retractable type that could be shortened and clipped to her belt, and she often could go short distances without it, using it mostly for stabilization instead of complete support.  The nerves in her leg were beginning to remember their connections, and she was back to using over-the-counter medication for pain relief, instead of the heavy-duty medications under Dr. Chakwas’ supervision.

She even began to wear her armor again; at first only for an hour at a time, but gradually her muscle memory began to take over.  Her strong right side compensated for her lagging left, and she began to practice brief drills in her cabin or out in the open fields behind the ship.  Dr. Chakwas told her that without her preexisting cybernetics, she would still be on bed rest.  Shepard didn’t care how she was able to move around again, just that it was possible.

Shepard and Garrus spoke easily to each other again.  They had entire days where they did not need to dwell on the things that had happened to them; they also had days where they talked it all over again, taking care not to withdraw from each other.  That day in the main battery had helped, as much as Shepard hated to admit it, recalibrate them.  She said as much to Garrus and laughed when he shook his head at the awful pun.

The galaxy began to move forward.  They had cheered, gathering around Traynor’s station in the CIC, when the first clear message from Alliance space came through.  It was merely a brief update on troop movements, but it was proof that all was not lost and the galaxy would speak to itself again.  They began to receive messages more regularly, updates on mass relay damage, catalogues of survivors, lists of refugee movements.  

One day they had been especially productive, using the remaining working blocks of prefab material to assemble basic dwellings.  They had not been able to do everything they would have liked — power sources to the homes were minimal, and none of the buildings were completely unscathed — but people could work on them.  People could live in them.

Kaidan called a crew meeting the next morning.  “Thanks to Specialist Traynor, I’ve been able to get word to the Alliance about our work here.  They’re going to be sending refugees from London.  People who saw their homes destroyed by the Reapers.  They’re going to get a second chance, here.”

“That’s wonderful news,” said Liara.

Shepard glanced at Joker.  He had been doing better the past few weeks, ever since EDI’s memorial.  She had talked with him several times since then, and slowly things were getting better between them.  He had told her how he had laid his father to rest, burying one of his father’s fallen orchard trees in lieu of a body.  It had taken him three days of work and two new ankle fractures to bury the tree, but he had done it himself, and he felt it was a proper sendoff for his father.  She noticed, though, that he made no mention of his sister.  

She wondered now how he would take the news of new people coming to colonize the land his family had lived and died on.  She was not sure how she would have felt about it, having grown up in ships in the darkness of space.

“It’ll be good to see people here again,” said Joker.  “No offense, but you guys don’t count,” he said with a small smile.  “When do they arrive?”

“They’re leaving today.  They’ve tested some of the relays along the way, sent out scouts.  They’ll get here quicker than we did,” said Kaidan.  “Possibly the next two or three days, depending on how rapidly they can get their supplies together.”

“Are we going to be the welcome wagon?” James asked.  “Hey, we could throw them a party.” 

“You humans have a strange concept of what entails a party,” said Javik.  “What would you say as a greeting?  ‘Welcome to your new home.  You are only here because the Reapers destroyed all that you possessed.  Enjoy.  Eat these miniature food items in celebration.’”

“Luckily, we don’t have to use Javik as a party planner,” said Kaidan.  “The Alliance wants us to get back to the Sol system for further assignment.  We’ll be heading out in a few hours, and this time it should only take a few days to get back, as most of the major relays have come back online.  So, if there’s any unfinished business you’ve got, now’s the time to take care of it.”

After the meeting, the crew dispersed.  Some headed back to their quarters to rearrange their things, service their supplies.  Shepard spied Joker heading down to the cargo hold with Liara and Steve, presumably for one last view of Tiptree.  Garrus took off for the main battery, eager to start a new round of calibrations.  Shepard found herself lingering in the war room with Kaidan.  

“Any idea what this next assignment is going to be?” Shepard asked shrewdly.

Kaidan crossed his arms, leaning back slightly.  “It looks like you’re getting around a lot better than you were when we got here, Shepard.”

“If there’s one thing I owe Cerberus for, besides this ship, it’s the fact that I’m apparently indestructible,” Shepard joked.  She knew that look Kaidan had.  There was something he wanted to talk to her about.  “Dr. Chakwas says if they can get me another implant for my leg, I should be ready for real duty again.”

“I know.”  He smiled at her.  “It’s good to see you acting more like your old self.”

“Good to feel that way, too.  Now, what’s up, Kaidan?”

“The last transmission we received wasn’t just about Tiptree refugees.”  He shifted from side to side.  “I got a call from my old team, with the First Special Operations Biotic Company.  There’s been some trouble with mercenaries hitting refugee camps, and they’re sending in special forces to sort it out. Said they could use some crack biotics.  Unfortunately, my friend in charge didn’t make it against the Reapers.  They’d like to have me back.”

Shepard looked at Kaidan.  He had told her some of the stories about his company, the way they worked together, misfits honed into extraordinary soldiers.  She knew he missed it.  “Is that what you want?”

“I’ve always been honored to serve on the Normandy.  But I miss my company.  Hackett wants Dr. Chakwas to do a new psych and medical eval on you.  If she says you’re fit to take command again, I’d be happy to go back to my spec ops team,” Kaidan said frankly.  “I know myself.  I know I can command this ship, and do it well.  But the Normandy will always feel like yours, Shepard.”

She smiled at him, though she was not sure how to feel.  “I’m touched, Kaidan.”  She had not realized that they might trust her for command again so soon.  The idea was exhilarating, but frightening as well.  “Do I have some time to think about it?”

“Sure,” said Kaidan.  “I know it’s a big decision, and you’ve been through more in the past few years than most people go through in a lifetime.  I get it.  Besides, Dr. Chakwas needs to make her evaluation before it goes any further than that.  But if she says you’re ready — just let me know what you want to do.  It’d be good to see you as Commander again, but I think I speak for everyone in saying that I’d understand, if you weren’t ready.”  

“Thanks,” she said.  “I’ll go see Karin, then.”  She nodded to him, and headed out of the war room, walking almost normally without the help of her cane.  Her left foot only dragged a little behind her.  

Shepard considered as she made her way back to the elevator.  There was a part of her that was eager to jump back into command.  She had grown so accustomed, the past three years, to the sound of it, the feel of it.  She agreed with Kaidan; the ship did feel like her own.  She missed knowing it for a certainty.  

She headed down to the medical bay, grateful to be using her own two feet instead of a cane.  Well, they were partially her own feet, and partially Cerberus’, she supposed.

She peered into the windows of the med-bay.  Dr. Chakwas was restocking the supplies.  She saw Shepard and smiled at her.  Shepard entered, noticing only a mild twinge from her leg.  

“Hello, Shepard,” Dr. Chakwas said, a small pause in the way she said Shepard’s name.  Shepard knew it had been difficult for the older woman to drop the  _Commander_  title when she spoke to her.  

“Hello, Karin.  I hear you and Kaidan have been talking about me,” Shepard said, grinning.  “Glad to know I’m still relevant enough to be gossiped about.”

“You should have heard the scuttlebutt after your ‘talk’ with Garrus a few weeks ago,” Dr. Chakwas said, raising an eyebrow.  “Now that was quite the interesting —”

“All right, all right,” Shepard groaned, waving a hand.  “Believe me, I already heard the worst of it.  Tali didn’t let us live that down for  _days_.”

Dr. Chakwas laughed.  “I’m quite sure of that.  Now, back to what you were saying.  Commander Alenko has filled you in, then?”

“Yes,” said Shepard.  “I thought that I would need to keep meeting with Dr. Harris before they wanted me back in command.  I’m better than I was — much, much better — but I still would have thought they’d want her to evaluate me.”

“She’s been reassigned, unfortunately,” said Dr. Chakwas.  “You can understand the demand they have for counselors experienced with wounded soldiers.  I did manage to get an update to her about you, and she felt I could take things from here.”

Shepard felt a stab of disappointment, which she quickly swallowed.  Even if her own counseling sessions had been cut short they had still been a great help to her, and she was glad to realize others would be receiving that aid.  The war had plenty of damage to go around.

The physical examination did not take long.  Dr. Chakwas took biometric samples and sent her through various drills and exercises.  By the end she was panting a little, but she was pleased that she had not needed the cane or a rest.  She knew she was still weak in the left leg, but it was not bad.

The psych evaluation took longer, and was the more tiring of the two exams, as Shepard had known it would be.  By the end she was hoarse from trying to explain the progress she had made and the changes in her thinking.  She hoped it would be enough, though she also wondered what it would be like to… stop.  To resign from the Alliance, to move on to a life of peacetime and rebuilding.  She had never had much of an interest in politics, but she knew that her own name would carry a weight that meant something in that arena.  She might not be able to bring back EDI, or the geth… but she could work to make synthetic intelligence legal in Citadel space.  New synthetic life could thrive without the shadow of the Reapers over everything.  If Dr. Chakwas did not find her suitable to return to command, she knew there were other things she could do with her life.  She was not finished yet. 

“All right, Shepard.  At ease,” said Dr. Chakwas.  “Go on and get some rest, you must be worn out after all that.  I know I am.”

“I’ve done harder things than that, but they usually involved killing thresher maws or Reapers,” said Shepard.  She got to her feet stiffly, wincing.  “All right, now the leg is pissed off.”

“I’ve heard back from some of my friends still around Earth,” said Dr. Chakwas.  “They think they can procure the implants I’ve been eyeing for your leg.  It shouldn’t take more than a week or so of adjustment once they’re in place before you’re running pell-mell into battle again.”

Shepard glanced at the doctor.  “Into battle?  Does that mean —”

“You’re released for duty, if you want to be?”  Dr. Chakwas said.  Her face broke into a wide smile, and she turned to her desk drawer.  “I was only able to buy a small bottle the last time I was on the Citadel, but it should be enough for one drink each.”  She pulled out her favorite Serrice ice brandy, and two glasses.  “If you’re ready to come back, we’ll be glad to have you… Commander.  I know you’ll need some time to think it over, but you have my approval.”  

She filled the glasses and handed one to Shepard.  They clinked them together, and Shepard drank, feeling the sweet burn rippling over her tongue and down her throat.  It tasted like friendship and victory, and she savored every drop.  

The comms clicked on, and she head Joker’s voice above them.  “Hey doc, you and Shepard in there still?”  

“Yes, Jeff,” Dr. Chakwas said.  “Are we leaving soon?”

“We’re taking off in a minute.  Once I put her in orbit, I’d like you and Shepard to meet me down by the cargo bay.  There’s… something I need to do, and it would mean a lot for you to be there.”

“Sure thing, Joker,” Shepard said.  The comms clicked off, and Shepard looked quizzically at Dr. Chakwas.  “Do you know what that’s about, Karin?”

Dr. Chakwas’ lips pressed into a sad smile.  “I’ve got a guess.”  She sighed heavily.  “Jeff has been through a lot.”

“The Reapers left nothing on Tiptree,” Shepard said bitterly.  “I’m still not sure how he’s holding up.  Maybe things would have been better for him if EDI was still here.”

“He’s a remarkably strong person,” said Dr. Chakwas.  “He needed to be, to get to where he is now.  I hope the future holds kinder things for him.”

“Amen to that,” Shepard said.  She unfolded her cane, leaning on it.  Beneath her feet she felt the sudden slight hum that meant they were taking off.  She and Dr. Chakwas made their way to the cargo bay.

When they stepped off the elevator, Shepard was surprised to see a few of the others there near the shuttle bay doors.  Liara, Tali, Kaidan, Garrus, and Steve stood there clustered in a small group.  The hold near the doors had been cleared of all boxes and crates, and looked unusually empty.  

Joker arrived a moment later, holding a box under one arm.  Shepard realized it was the box he had pulled out of the wreckage of his family home, the one that had belonged to his sister.

“You guys are probably wondering why I asked you down here,” Joker said, rubbing the back of his neck with his free hand.  Liara gave him a sad smile.  

“None of you ever met my little sister, Hilary,” he said.  Shepard edged closer in the group to Garrus, and she felt his hand on her shoulder.  “We called her Gunny.  She was a real active kid, always playing soldier.”  He smiled at the memory.

“She was so jealous of me going off to be a pilot.  She wanted to be one, too, and she was pissed I got to do it first.  But I told her I’d always write home and brag about all the badass shit I was doing,” Joker said.  His hands tightened on the box in his hands.  “So I told her about this crew I had.”

He nodded to Dr. Chakwas.  “I told Gunny that you kept me from getting new fractures, you were that good, Karin.  She thought that was awesome.”

“That isn’t  _precisely_  true, Jeff,” said Dr. Chakwas in a much gentler tone than she normally used.

“Maybe not, but Gunny liked to hear about it.”  He glanced at Garrus.  “She thought Archangel was such a rebel.  I tried to tell her you were just a crazy vigilante turian who liked taking rockets to the face but she somehow got the impression that you were actually cool.”

“What a terrible mistake,” Garrus murmured. 

“I know, right?”  Joker’s voice was sad, strained.  Shepard swallowed hard, seeing the way he held the box so tightly.  She realized it looked oddly familiar.

“Tali?  She thought you were amazing.  I told her about the way you could fix a busted ship with a shoelace and a pocketful of eezo and she wanted to be just as smart.”

Tali tilted her head to one side, and when she spoke, her voice was thick as if she was fighting back tears.  “Joker, I never knew.”

“Oh, I just didn’t want you guys to get egotistical or anything,” Joker scoffed.  “I tried to keep that kind of observation to myself.”  He looked at Steve.  “One of the last messages I got to send to her, I told her about this new shuttle pilot I had.  I told her he was almost as good as me.  She said she hoped you would put me in my place.”

Steve laughed.  “Don’t worry, Joker.  I can do that any day.”

“She’d be glad to hear it, man.”  He smiled a little, shrugging.  “Liara… thank you, again, for trying to find news of her, and Dad.”  The smile slipped from his face.  “I told her how much you knew.  How without you, we’d have been sunk against Saren.  She never got to meet an asari, growing up on this backwater little planet.  But she would have loved to meet you.  She had posters of asari commandos on her wall, she thought they were  _so cool_.”

“You’re welcome, Jeff.  I wish I could have helped more,” Liara said, bowing her head.

“Kaidan?  Man, I don’t know how to break this to you, but my fifteen-year-old sister definitely had a crush on you.  I think it was the hair.”  

Kaidan grinned, but the smile did not reach his eyes.  “The poor kid,” Kaidan said.

“Right?  I couldn’t make her believe what a dork you really were,” Joker said.  He started opening up the box, his fingers fumbling to peel back the tape that held the original packaging together.

“And Shepard….” Joker said, sliding the flap of the box open, glancing up to look at her.  His eyes were reddening, a sheen of tears glazing their surface.  “You were her hero.  That’s all there is to it.  I mean, I didn’t tell her about the bad dancing or she might have just been embarrassed for you.  But she looked up to you.”  He pulled out the plastic casing from the box.  “She looked up to all of you.  So l got her this for her birthday last year.”

He set the box down on the ground, and opened the plastic.  Shepard realized why the battered, dirty box had looked so familiar.  A replica Normandy SR-1 lay in his hands, all sleek curves and shining metal.  Mint condition. 

Joker looked up at them all.  “Gunny wanted to be a pilot, like her big brother.  So I got her her own ship.”

Liara’s eyes welled with tears, and Shepard heard Tali sniffing inside of her suit.  Kaidan and Steve both looked red-eyed.  Dr. Chakwas wiped at her face.  Shepard felt tears pricking at her own eyes, and this time she let them fall.   

“Joker, I’m so sorry,” said Shepard. 

“Me too,” he said.  He set the ship down on the ground, balancing it on its miniature landing gear.  It gleamed in the overhead lights, perfect and pristine.  Joker nodded to the rest of them, beckoning them back away from the shuttle bay doors.  When they had moved back far enough, he nodded to Steve, who activated the emergency doors.  They were designed to keep people from being sucked out of the airlock in an emergency breach, and they sealed off the rest of the cargo hold completely from the hull of the ship. 

Shepard watched through the thick clear emergency doors, reaching out with one hand to grip Joker’s shoulder.  He looked at her, and despite the pain in his face she could feel the gratitude he had for her presence.  She knew then that even with everything that had happened, they were still friends; still teammates.  She nodded at him, rubbing his back, and he swallowed.  The others clustered around him, quiet but close. 

The little ship seemed dwarfed by the walls surrounding her, the tall ceiling arching overhead.  The Normandy SR-1 faced the doors of the shuttle bay proudly, as beautiful as her namesake had been. 

“Gunny,” said Joker, “I love you, twerp.  Get out there and fly.  You’ve earned it.”  

Steve’s hands moved over the wall controls, and the outer doors opened like a flower, revealing a glimpse of glorious stars against the endless darkness.  For a second Shepard could see the round curve of the planet below, green and lush in the sea of stars and nebulae.  Then the tiny ship was gone, pulled into the vacuum in an eternal orbit, forever flying around a little world called Tiptree.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I couldn’t bear for Joker to know that his sister was killed by an asari she trusted after days of fear and running and fighting off husks with a STICK, but I FUCKING KNEW OKAY, so I threw in those references to asari to be an evil asshole. ;_; Also, the last chapter is finished and I will post it in a few days!


	30. Coming Back

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Conclusions. Moving on after the Reaper War.

Shepard’s hands moved methodically over her cup of tea, dangling the tea bag with one hand, gently swirling the mug of hot water with the other.  The lights were dim in the kitchen area, given the late hour.  They were due to reach the Sol System in the morning.

She had only needed a single day of long thought to make up her mind.  She would take up the post of Commander again, and Kaidan would return to his spec ops team.  Kaidan’s smile had been warm and real when she gave him the news.  Dr. Chakwas had surprised her with a high five, and Traynor with a delighted hug that she quickly pulled out of, looking embarrassed but pleased.  Steve and James had insisted on a celebratory shot of tequila, which turned into a double shot when James mentioned that he had received notice: the Alliance was starting up N7 training again soon.  Laughingly James had told her to make sure not to wreck the ship without him around to keep an eye on her, but the fierceness of his handshake belied how much he would miss her.

Shepard removed and discarded her tea bag, curling both hands around the mug.  She inhaled the sweet scents of peppermint and chamomile.  She knew that her body would not be able to withstand the life of a soldier forever, no matter how many implants they put in there; but until her body gave out completely, she would not feel right behind a desk or in an office.  Here amidst the throb of the ship’s engines was where she belonged.  

Despite the relief in having made a decision, she was not looking forward to the next few weeks.  As she had gone around the ship, she had realized more goodbyes than just Kaidan’s were coming.  Tali, as an admiral, told Shepard sadly that she was needed back on Rannoch to help organize the mass waves of resettlements.  Shepard gave her a long hug, and though she was sad, she could also tell how excited Tali was to return to the homeworld.  She tried not to think about what that world could have looked like, with geth and quarians side by side.

Shepard had been mollified by remembering the letter she had drafted to the Council, though; a missive arguing for the legalization of synthetic intelligences in Citadel space.  Liara and Tali had helped her edit it, and had cosigned.  Shepard was a fair writer, but Liara knew how to make things sound persuasive, and Tali brought up technical arguments for the equality of synthetic life.  They detailed the sacrifices and true history of the geth, the work EDI had done to keep the Normandy flying and her crew safe.  They had already sent it to the Council, and Liara would be making sure it appeared in broadcasts as communications continued to improve.  It was a small step, only the first of many, but Shepard hoped it could start to soften traditional views towards synthetics.  She had to believe that one cycle could continue; the cycle of endless growth and creation, the birth of new life both organic and synthetic.  She hoped that her act of destruction had taken the last casualties of the Reaper war.  

For now, Liara would be staying on board.  She was working on restoring a base of operations for the Shadow Broker, and with a smile she had playfully told Shepard she could not tell her where it was, or she would have to kill her.  (She immediately told Shepard she was joking and of course she hoped Shepard would come to visit her often when it was complete, as long as the Normandy’s stealth systems were fully operational.)  Javik might be going with her when it was completed.  They still had only rudimentary notes on the book they were writing together, and Shepard suspected that where Liara went, Javik would follow, complaining all the way.

Shepard glanced up from her reverie, hearing the footsteps of someone coming out of the elevator.  She was not surprised to see it was Joker; his shuffling steps sounded like no one else’s.  He waved his hat at her as he made his way to the kitchen.  

“Hey, Shepard.  Getting a midnight snack?”

“Just some tea.  Helps me sleep.  At least, that’s the idea,” she said.  “How about you?”

“Nah,” said Joker, rummaging through the cupboard.  “I felt like sushi, but all we’ve got are those weird seaweed snacks from Kahje.  Guess it’ll have to do.”

“We never did get our sushi dinner, did we?” Shepard mused.  She took a drink of her tea, the hot liquid warming her from within.

“Too bad  _somebody_  smashed the place up,” said Joker, pulling out the package of dried seaweed.  He opened them up, sniffing experimentally.  “Are they supposed to smell like this?”  He waved the box in her face and she got an unpleasant salty green smell.

“It smells like seaweed, yes,” she said.  “What did you expect?”  She peered at him.  He looked a little better than he had the last few weeks; his eyes less shadowed, mouth set in a less permanent frown.  “How are you holding up, Joker?”

Joker examined the food in his hands.  “I’m… well, I’m getting along, I guess,” he said.  He smiled a little at her.  “You’re not the only one who talks to Dr. Chakwas.  It’s been more than I can stand, sometimes.”  He glanced up at her.  “I’m glad you came to help me say goodbye to Gunny.  I — I was never that close to my dad.  But I looked out for Gunny.”  He sighed.  

“I’m sorry,” said Shepard.  “For — all of this.  Tiptree.  EDI.  This whole damn war.”

“I know,” said Joker.  “I’m sorry, too.  I mean, I got you killed once.”  He shrugged, holding out the box of seaweed crackers to her.  “Ladies first.”

“Hey, if someone had to get me killed, I’d rather it be you than some merc or a Reaper.  But listen, you know I’m not a lady,” said Shepard.  “I don’t think anyone’s made  _that_ mistake before.”  She looked down at her rumpled BDUs beneath her half-zipped N7 hooded sweatshirt.  “Besides, I don’t think seaweed goes well with peppermint.”

“You’re probably right,” said Joker.  He leaned against the counter.  “Ready to get back to Sol?”

“I think so,” said Shepard.  “Are you?  I would more than understand if you needed more time.  You’ve held it together better than me, Joker, but maybe you’re just a better actor than I am.”

“More good-looking, too,” said Joker.  He gazed steadily at her, his eyes clear, his face serious but certain.  “I’m not okay, Shepard.   I won’t be for a while, but I’m dealing with it.  I can still fly this ship.”  

“With me as your commander?” asked Shepard.  “After everything?”

Joker considered her for a moment, and she winced, missing the sound of EDI’s clear voice, her jokes, her brilliance, her curiosity.  She wondered if EDI and Ashley would have liked each other.  She hoped so.

“Yeah,” said Joker.  “After everything.”  He held out his right hand, and she shook it, her face cracking into a smile.  Before he could open his hand she reached out, pulling him into a quick hug.

“It’s only because I’d miss the Normandy too much,” Joker protested.  “I mean, flying anything else after flying this girl would feel like steering a  _bus_.  That’s it.”  He put up with her hug for a few seconds, then pulled back, though she saw he was smiling.

“Of course,” Shepard said.  “Definitely.”  

“All right, I gotta get going,” said Joker.  “You know we’ll be there in… ah… seven hours.”

“Yeah, time for me to get to bed,” Shepard said.  But when Joker headed back to the elevator, Shepard turned and walked towards the main battery.

She chuckled when she saw Garrus standing at his control panel, his hands flying over the figures.  For a moment she had a mental image of Garrus bowed with age, his mandibles craggy, his gnarled hands working on calibrating the newest Thanix cannon.  The image was hilarious — Garrus, the grumpy old turian — but it also filled her with a sudden sense of hope.  Maybe, despite everything they had been through… maybe she would get to grow old with him.  

“Hey, Garrus,” she said.  “Ready to come to bed?”

Garrus stilled his hands, and turned around to face her.  He tilted his head to one side.  “I guess it’s getting late, isn’t it,” he said.

“Joker said we’ll be there in about seven hours,” said Shepard.  “It’d be nice to try and get some rest.”

“Especially since you’ve got a big day ahead of you,” said Garrus softly, crossing his arms.  “Meeting with Admiral Hackett.  Official reinstatement.  New cybernetics.”

“Thanks for reminding me,” Shepard groaned.  She edged over to him, leaning up to brush her lips against his scarred cheek.  “At least I’ll have you around for a while until Palaven’s relays are repaired.  Have you heard from your dad and sister yet?”

“Dad says Solana’s learning to walk again.  It was pretty touch and go for a while, but she’s gonna be fine.  If the current estimates hold up, I should be able to go find them in a few weeks.”  He looked at her shyly.  “I haven’t always gotten along with them, but I think that with everything that’s happened, they’ll be happy to see me.  And if you wanted to come too…”

“Of course,” she said, grinning at him.  “I’d love to, Garrus.”

“Oh!  Well.  Good,” he said.  “Should be interesting, to say the least.”  He reached up with one hand to caress her cheek, slipping his fingers through the strands of hair that fell into her face.  “There’s one more thing before we go to bed.  I was saving this for you.”

“What?” she asked, surprised.

He held up a hand to silence her, then rummaged behind his workbench, pulling something out that he held behind his back.  She looked up at him questioningly, then reached out her hand.  He held the object out to her.

It was a nameplate.  COMMANDER SHEPARD.

Her fingers closed around it, and the metal was slick and cold against her palm.  She remembered the smell of smoke, the copper taste of blood, the harsh burn of hot ashes on her skin.  She shivered.

Garrus bent his head until their foreheads touched, and he slipped his arms around her.  “I knew I couldn’t put your name up on that memorial wall, Shepard.  So you take it back for safekeeping.  Let’s keep that wall empty for a good, long time.”

“Garrus,” she whispered.  “I love you.”

“Love you, too.”

They headed back to her cabin.  Inside, she set her tea down on her bedside table.  Carefully she looked at her desk and the memories made real there: the geth cruiser, the ring from EDI, Tennyson’s poems, a Sur’kesh seashell and a prayer book to Kalahira.  She took the memorial nameplate and fastened it to the wall above the group photo.  She looked over at Garrus, who had already undressed and gotten into bed.  

“I got a second chance, Garrus,” she said slowly.

“A third one, actually, but who’s counting?” he said.  “Actually, I’m counting.  The question is, what will you do with it?”

“Good things, I hope.  I’ll fight.  I’ll try.”  Her mouth pulled into a smile.  “I’ll shoot things, probably.”

“Atta girl.”

She undressed, dropping her sweatshirt and BDUs in a pile, tossing her underthings aside.  She slipped under the covers with Garrus and keyed the lights off, leaving only the dim blue gleam of the fish tank and the twinkle of stars above.  She curled up against her turian, reveling in the warmth of his skin, the familiar feel of him.  

“It’s not going to be easy,” she said.  She could just make out his eyes, glinting in the dim light.

“Life never is,” he said, kissing her.  “But you’re not done kicking ass yet, Shepard.”

“I know.  It’s just…  everything that’s happened, it’ll stay with me,” Shepard said.  “I don’t think I’ll be ‘okay’ for a long time.”  She sighed, but it was not a sad sound.  “But one day there’ll be a new normal, and I’ll be mostly all right. There will still be those times I take the memories out of their little boxes and examine them, but it won’t be as often, or as painful.”  She thought back to Akuze, to Virmire, to the day that she died.  “I’ve done this before.  I think I can do it again.”

“I know you can.”  His arms around her were shelter, warmth, life, love.  She rested her cheek against his, their chests rising and falling together, wrapped in a soft embrace.

She realized that he was already drifting to sleep, his breath shifting to those long, vibrating exhalations that signaled sleep in turians.  She gently kissed his forehead without waking him, and pulled her pillow beneath her head, falling asleep beside him.

She slept long in a restful sleep without dreams, and in the morning she woke up next to a turian who kissed her cheek and held her close.  She was here in the best damn ship in the galaxy, with the best crew a commander could ask for.  She knew that wherever they found themselves in the galaxy, no matter where they scattered to, they would always be bound together by their time on this ship.  She thought of them: crew, teammates, friends.  There were good memories to be had here, not only grief.  

Shepard looked up at the skylight to see stars glittering against the abyss.  There was a wide-flung galaxy there before her.  She could do this, she thought.

She could come back, after the dark.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> IT’S OVER! I am… stunned? Amazed? What? I don’t even know. All I know is I couldn’t bear to leave my Shepard in the rubble of the Citadel. She had to atone, and she had to move on, and so did all of her friends. Thank you so much to everyone who’s been readiing this, it has been a delight to chat with you all and it gives me endless warm fuzzies to know you all liked what is in essence my extended headcanon. I’ve never written any fic this long before, but I’m glad it’s been well-received. Thank you all again!


End file.
